IRLF 


B    3    Sbl    fiflfl 


STUDIES   OF    IRVING 


BY 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER,    WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 
GEORGE  PALMER  PUTNAM 


NEW  YORK 

G.    P.    PUTNAM'S    SONS 
182  FIFTH  AVENUE 

1880 


COPYRIGHT 

1880 
BY  G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


1<J  33 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

WASHINGTON  IRVING  :  An  Essay.  By  Charles  Dudley  Warner. 
Prepared  in  January,  1880,  as  an  Introduction  to  the  "  Geoffrey 
Crayon  "  edition  of  Irving's  Works 7 

WASHINGTON  IRVING  :  His  LIFE,  CHARACTER,  AND  GENIUS.  By 
William  Cullen  Bryant.  A  Discourse  delivered  before  the  New 
York  Historical  Society,  April  3,  1860 77 

WASHINGTON  IRVING  :  PERSONAL  REMINISCENCES.  By  his  Publisher, 
George  P.  Putnam.  Written  for  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  Novem 
ber,  I860..  .  131 


WASHINGTON"   IRVING 

A 
BIOGRAPHICAL  A1STD  CEITICAL  STUDY 

PREPARED  AS  AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  "  GEOFFREY  CRAYON  " 
EDITION  OF  HIS  WORKS 

BY 

CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 


WASHINGTON  IKVUTGL 


T  seems  to  be  proper  that  a  new  and  notewor 
thy  edition  of  the  works  of  "Washington  Irving 
should  be  prefaced  by  a  slight  sketch  of  the 
author's  life,  and  some  estimate  of  his  position  as  a  man 
of  letters.  As  the  admirable  "  Life  and  Letters,"  edited 
by  his  nephew,  Mr.  Pierre  M.  Irving,  will  form  a  part  of 
this  edition,  it  is  unnecessary  here  to  indulge  in  many 
biographical  details ;  and  in  the  space  allotted  to  me  I 
shall  use  them  only  to  aid  in  the  estimate  that  I  wish 
to  make  of  the  author. 

The  twenty  years  that  have  elapsed  since  Irving's 
death  do  not  at  all  represent  the  space  that  separates 
our  age  from  his.  We  seem  to  have  lived  a  century 
since  the  war  of  the  rebellion  came  to  shake  and  scat 
ter  forever  our  fatuous  dream  of  security  and  immunity. 
In  two  decades  we  have  had  the  social  and  political 
transformation  and  growth  of  a  hundred  years.  And  in 
no  aspect  of  our  national  life  is  the  transition  so  marked 
as  it  is  in  our  literature,  in  our  mental  attitude  towards 

7 


8  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

the  facts  of  our  own  life  and  the  world  foreign  to  us. 
This  change  has  not  been  produced  alone  by  our  internal 
evolution;  but  this  has  conspired  with  outward  influ 
ences  to  break  our  sense  of  separateness  as  a  people,  to 
abate  our  self-consciousness,  and  to  give  our  literary  ex 
pression  more  freedom,  vigor,  and  a  more  cosmopolitan 
tone.  The  day  of  experiment  may  be  said  to  be  over; 
the  day  of  emancipation  has  come ;  and  in  some  of  the 
great  departments  of  scholarship,  however  it  may  be  in 
literature,  America  looks  no  longer  to  England  but  to 
Germany  only  for  its  rivals.  Irving,  in  fact,  died  just  on 
the  eve  of  a  new  era,  an  era  to  which  the  most  active  sur 
vivors  of  that  preceding  it  experience  infinite  difficulty 
in  adjusting  themselves,  one  to  which  it  is  safe  to  say  Ir 
ving  would  have  remained  an  uncomprehending  stranger. 
But  this  period,  expanded  as  it  is  into  more  than  a 
generation  of  experience  by  its  radical  transitions,  does 
not,  after  all,  measure  our  distance  from  Irving.  He 
lived  far  into  an  age  of  doubt,  with  whose  spirit,  except 
in  the  most  superficial  way  of  material  contact  and  en 
joyment,  he  was  not  in  sympathy.  There  is  nothing  in 
his  biography  or  his  letters  to  show  that  during  the 
seventeen  years  of  his  residence  abroad,  and  the  time  of 
his  most  fertile  mental  activity,  he  apprehended  the  stir 
in  aspiration  and  thinking  that  what  may  be  called  the 
"  new  learning"  was  introducing  into  England  from  Ger 
many — the  first  breaking  up  of  the  insularness  of  the 
English  mind — the  light  of  which  in  the  face  of  Carlyle 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  9 

soon  drew  the  curious  young  Emerson  across  the  Atlantic 
to  see. 

Already  when  he  returned  to  the  United  States  in 
1832,  our  most  famous  and  most  lauded  and  loved  man 
of  letters,  the  dawn  of  change  had  declared  itself  here  to  a 
sensitive  observation.  There  never  was  a  more  sensitive 
observer  born  in  America  than  Irving,  and  that  he  did 
not  perceive  this  new  effluence,  or,  if  he  did  perceive  it, 
that  he  was  unaffected  by  it,  must  be  set  down  to  the 
fact  that  he  was  in  his  literary  constitution  the  man  of 
another  era ;  and  I  should  also  add  the  minor  fact,  that 
his  surroundings  were  in  a  commercial  metropolis,  where 
wealth  and  fashion,  and  family  traditions  based  upon  suc 
cess  in  politics  and  trade  rather  than  upon  moral  and  lit 
erary  elements,  conspired  to  make  him  insensible  to  what 
was  stirring  in  New  England.  If  Irving  had  been  born 
and  had  lived  in  Boston,  his  career  would  have  been  very 
different  from  what  it  was — for  he  was  exceedingly  im 
pressionable  to  the  nearest  influences — but  I  doubt  if  it 
would  have  been  so  serviceable  to  the  world.  But  Irving 
held  himself  measurably  aloof  from  the  age  in  which 
he  lived  in  other  respects.  I  mention  this,  not  by  way  of 
criticism — for  of  the  right  of  the  literary  artist  to  take 
the  position  of  a  calm  observer  merely,  I  shall  have 
something  to  say  further  on — but  only  as  accounting  in 
part  for  his  distance  away  from  us,  the  separation  of  his 
writings  from  the  feverish  and  unrestful  conditions  of 
our  own  generation. 


10  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

Of  the  era  of  the  Emancipation  Act  and  the  Reform  Bill 
in  England,  and  of  the  anti-slavery  agitation  in  America 
— an  era  in  which  were  germinating  everywhere  the  pow 
erful  forces  of  which  our  time  has  reaped  the  fruits  in 
revolutions — Irving  was  almost  a  passive  spectator.  This 
abstention  was  not  from  insensibility,  it  was  certainly 
not  from  cold-heartedness — he  looked  at  slavery,  for  in 
stance,  exactly  as  Washington  regarded  it, — it  was  not 
from  want  of  patriotism,  for  in  that  respect  he  was  an 
American  of  the  Americans,  and  it  was  not  from  want  of 
sympathy  with  what  he  called  "the  great  cause  of  the 
world ; "  but  he  obeyed  an  instinct  of  his  nature  in  keep 
ing  his  literature  free  from  what  seemed  to  him  tempo 
rary  excitements.  I  think  he  had  in  mind  always  the  pro 
duction  of  something  that  should  be  as  good  for  one  age 
as  for  another,  and,  whether  he  succeeded  or  not,  in  this 
he  rightly  apprehended  the  true  function  of  literature. 
His  books  are  separated  from  us,  then,  by  the  absence  in 
them  of  what  the  newspapers  call  "  living  issues."  The 
next  generation,  if  it  recovers  the  leisurely  frame  of  mind 
which  we  have  lost,  will  find  in  them  no  note  of  the  re 
formatory,  religious  and  philosophical  ferment,  doubt  and 
chaos  of  his  day.  If  I  want  at  any  moment  to  transport 
myself  into  a  calm  and  restful  time,  I  can  do  it  by  taking 
up  Irving.  And  yet,  before  one  can  do  this  with  enjoy 
ment,  he  must  discharge  himself  of  the  hurry  which  has 
seized  upon  us  all ;  and  to  bespeak  such  a  calm  mental 
state  now,  is  something  like  promising  to  New  York  the 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  H 

tranquillity  of  Egypt  when  it  shall  have  set  up  the  Alex 
andrian  obelisk  amidst  surroundings  that  are  the  most 
incongruous  that  could  be  devised  for  it. 

I  am  not  now  wishing  to  set  up  any  comparison  be 
tween  the  literature  of  Irving  and  that  of  his  successors, 
but  only  to  note  the  fact  that  he  produced  literature  in 
the  strict  sense  in  which  I  use  the  word ;  literature  being 
not  merely  a  report  of  the  feeling  and  sentiment  of  a  time 
— though  it  may  be  that  in  substance — but  having  cer 
tain  other  qualities  of  form  and  style  which  make  it  an 
enduring  thing  in  the  world,  and  without  which  it  falls 
into  the  category  of  De  Quincey's  literature  of  knowledge 
and  not  of  power. 

We  are  certainly  far  enough  away  from  Irving  to  take 
an  impartial  view  of  his  literary  rank,  a  view  that  would 
have  been  impossible  twenty-five  years  ago,  when  we 
were  under  the  glamour  of  his  immense  success.  Never 
did  an  author  reign  with  more  unquestioned  sway  than 
he  did  for  about  fifty  years.  There  was  only  here  and 
there  a  dissentient  from  the  general  approbation — John 
Neal,  whose  slashing  criticism  was  often  not  without  real 
insight,  so  that  some  of  it  has  come  to  be  accepted  as 
just,  and  Edgar  A.  Poe,  whose  judgment  of  his  contem 
poraries  is  always  open  to  the  suspicion  of  petty  personal 
feeling.  There  was  other  criticism,  there  were  excep 
tions  to  this  or  that  performance,  but  it  was  all  from  the 
background  of  a  universal  recognition  of  Irving's  high 
place  and  popularity.  No  other  literary  man  in  America 


12  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

was  so  generally  admired  and  loved,  and  probably  no 
other  so  widely  and  permanently  influenced  the  diffused 
literary  tastes  of  his  countrymen.  Much  of  this  was  due 
to  his  opportunity ;  he  appeared  at  the  very  beginning  of 
our  formative  period,  and  he  gave  it  its  direction  and 
tone  for  many  years ;  and  it  is  very  fortunate  that  this 
plastic  condition  was  operated  on  by  an  influence  so  pure 
and  salutary.  His  example  and  his  early  success  abroad 
gave  a  stimulus  to  literary  production  in  this  country, 
the  value  of  which  we  are  likely  to  underestimate  at  this 
moment ;  but  his  greater  service  was  the  making  of  books 
that  were  capable  of  exercising  a  refining  and  civilizing 
power,  and  yet  had  in  them  the  elements  that  made  them 
acceptable  to  almost  everybody,  high  and  low,  who  could 
read.  I  am  aware  that  the  quality  of  a  book  has  little 
relation  to  its  popularity  at  a  given  time — even  the  con 
temporary  judgment  of  critics  is  as  often  at  fault  as  that 
of  the  masses  ;  I  am  only  insisting  that  Irving's  literature 
had  an  immense  and  wholesome  influence  in  this  coun 
try  for  fifty  years. 

Irving's  career  is  a  kind  of  bridge  connecting  two  eras, 
on  which  as  we  walk  backward  we  have  a  distinct  view  of 
amazing  social  and  literary  changes.  He  died  in  1859,  and 
his  birth  was  almost  coeval  with  that  of  the  Republic. 

He  first  saw  the  light — it  was  on  the  3d  of  April,  1783 
— only  a  few  months  before  General  "Washington  entered 
New  York  upon  its  evacuation  by  the  British  troops. 
The  New  York  of  now  and  of  then  is  an  epitome  of  our 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  13 

national  transformation.  There  are  citizens  who  remem 
ber  the  quaint,  dormer-windowed  brick  house,  with  a 
Dutch  physiognomy,  in  William  Street,  where  Irving 
grew  up.  It  was  not  pulled  down  till  1849.  At  the 
time  of  his  birth  New  York  was  a  little  town  of  about 
23,000  inhabitants,  with  the  characteristics  of  a  village. 
Its  low  and  picturesque  houses  were  grouped  about  the 
Battery,  which  was  the  fashionable  quarter,  on  strag 
gling  streets,  that  were  said  to  have  been  laid  out  by  the 
indolent  Dutch  on  cow-paths  ;  shade  trees  abounded,  and 
the  military  science  of  the  militia  captains  on  training 
days  was  in  nothing  more  conspicuous  than  in  getting 
their  valiant  companies  around  the  water-pumps  which 
stood  in  the  middle  of  the  highway,  and  disorganized  the 
array  as  much  as  the  taverns  on  the  line  of  march, 
though  for  a  different  reason.  The  town  was  in  a  sorry 
condition ;  it  had  been  half  destroyed  by  fire  during  the 
Revolution,  and  trade  did  not  exist  except  in  the  clumsy 
boats  that  brought  vegetables  from  Jersey  and  the  isl 
ands.  The  inhabitants  were  half  Dutch  and  half  Eng 
lish,  and  the  social  demarkation  was  maintained,  al 
though  the  English  influence  predominated.  Enterprise 
almost  immediately  sprang  up  on  the  advent  of  peace, 
and  the  city  began  its  unchecked  career.  From  the  be 
ginning  almost,  and  in  contrast  to  all  other  American 
towns,  it  is  noticeable  that  the  people  had  city  aspira 
tions,  and  began  to  put  on  a  metropolitan  air  before 
they  were  out  of  village  conditions. 


14  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

Society  was  organized  differently  from  that  of  Boston 
or  Philadelphia;  it  was  more  cosmopolitan,  less  neigh 
borly;  the  New  Yorker  was  known  everywhere  by  cer 
tain  assumptions.  The  commercial  and  trading  spirit 
ruled;  there  were  country  gentlemen  whose  influence 
was  not  small  in  New  York,  but  the  city  aristocracy  were 
the  trading  class ;  the  atmosphere  was  the  reverse  of 
intellectual;  what  literary  culture  existed  was  simply  a 
liking  for  old  English  books,  and  some  formal  acquaint 
ance  with  the  classics,  which  had  little  vivifying  effect. 
There  are  small  traces  of  the  scientific  spirit  which 
Franklin  had  planted  in  Philadelphia,  or  of  the  theolog 
ical  activity  which  prevailed  in  New  England ;  there  was 
a  good  substratum  of  old-fashioned  orthodoxy  and  moral 
ity,  but  society  was  on  the  whole  free,  convivial,  pleasure- 
loving;  and  the  gay,  somewhat  mercurial  character  of 
the  people  has  been  transmitted  to  their  descendants. 
This  society  was  not  incapable  of  taking  up  literature  as 
a  fashion ;  and  it  was  the  good  fortune  of  Irving  to  make 
literature  rather  the  fashion. 

Irving's  father  was  a  merchant  who  had  settled  in  New 
York  in  1763,  and  been  successful  until  his  business  was 
broken  up  by  the  war.  He  was  born  on  Shapinshay,  one 
of  the  Orkney  Islands,  of  a  notable  family,  whose  fortunes 
had  decayed,  which  traced  its  descent  from  William  de 
Irwyn,  the  armor-bearer  of  Kobert  Bruce.  His  mother, 
Sarah  Sanders,  was  a  native  of  Falmouth,  England,  and 
the  granddaughter  of  a  curate.  William  Irving,  who  had 


CHARLE8  DUDLEY  WARNER.  15 

taken  to  the  sea  for  a  living,  met  the  beautiful  girl  when 
he  was  a  petty  officer  on  a  packet  plying  between  Fal- 
mouth  and  New  York,  and  two  years  after  their  mar 
riage  he  quit  the  sea  and  made  their  home  in  the  capital 
of  the  New  World.  Those  who  think  the  genius  of  a 
large  family  is  apt  to  be  one  of  the  latest  comers  in  it, 
find  their  theory  confirmed  in  the  case  of  "Washington 
Irving ;  he  was  the  eighth  son  and  the  youngest  of  eleven 
children.  The  whole  family  was  as  remarkable  for  talent 
as  it  was  for  amiability,  integrity,  and  strong  family  affec 
tion,  which  had  in  it  something  of  the  Scotch  clannish- 
ness.  The  father  was  a  stanch  Whig  during  the  war 
and  suffered  for  his  principles,  and  his  wife  was  a  sort 
of  ministering  angel  to  the  patriot  prisoners  confined  in 
the  city. 

It  was  from  his  mother  that  Irving  inherited  his  gay 
humor,  his  love  of  society,  and  probably  his  tendency  to 
letters.  She  was  a  woman  of  fine  intellectual  grain;  a 
nature  full  of  tenderness,  and  abundant  good  sense.  In 
his  father  flowed  a  pure  strain  of  Covenanter  blood ;  in 
business  he  was  the  soul  of  probity  ;  in  religion  he  was 
severe  and  godly ;  and  in  his  household  strict  and  exact 
ing  in  demanding  conformity  to  his  religious  creed  and 
practice  ;  although  he  had  tenderness  in  his  nature,  it 
lay  far  below  the  surface  ;  in  his  scheme  of  life  there  was 
no  room  for  triviality  or  amusement ;  and  he  endeavored 
to  bring  up  his  children  in  the  fear  of  God  and  the  sense 
of  the  sinfulness  of  pleasure.  His  severe  and  gloomy 


16  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

rectitude  would  have  made  his  home  intolerable  to  the 
children  if  it  had  not  been  moderated  to  them  by  the 
tenderness  and  sympathy  of  their  mother ;  although  she 
conformed  in  worship  to  her  husband,  she  did  not  share 
his  harsh  views,  and  always  retained  in  her  heart  the 
leniencies  of  her  Episcopalian  training.  Indeed  the  chil 
dren  were  repelled  from  the  religion  of  their  father. 
Ultimately  all,  except  one,  became  members  of  the  Epis 
copal  Church.  Washington,  without  asserting  his  inde 
pendence  outwardly,  and  while  still  attending  the.  Sunday 
services  and  submitting  to  his  father's  drill  in  the  Cate 
chism,  at  an  early  age  made  good  his  escape  by  slyly 
stepping  into  Trinity  Church  and  receiving  the  rite  of 
confirmation. 

It  was  the  mother's  idea  to  name  the  boy  after  the 
victorious  leader  of  the  Revolution,  and  I  think  the  name 
had  an  appreciable  influence  upon  his  career  and  the 
future  currency  of  his  work ;  and  the  lad  may  also  have 
been  impressed  by  the  fact  of  a  personal  contact  with  the 
great  man.  It  was  on  the  occasion  of  Washington's  resi 
dence  in  the  city  as  President  that  the  boy's  nurse  fol 
lowed  the  popular  hero  into  a  shop  one  day,  and  pre 
sented  his  little  namesake ;  and  that  Washington  laid  his 
hand  in  blessing  on  the  head  of  his  future  biographer. 

The  lad  was  in  no  sense  a  prodigy ;  he  was  simply  an 
affectionate,  merry,  frolicsome,  handsome  boy,  with  a 
spice  of  mischief,  whose  pranks  gave  his  tender  but 
admiring  mother  some  uneasiness;  she  would  exclaim, 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  17 

"Oh,  Washington!  if  you  were  only  good !  "  He  was  not 
studious,  but  he  was  fond  of  reading,  and  early  developed 
the  "  scribbling  "  propensity  in  the  composition  of  verses 
and  plays ;  at  school  he  used  to  write  compositions  for 
boys  who  would  do  his  sums  in  arithmetic.  His  educa 
tion  was  conducted  under  several  indifferent  teachers,  and 
was  without  thoroughness.  From  his  last  master  he  got 
a  little  Latin,  and  about  the  same  time  he  took  some  les 
sons  in  music,  and,  unknown  to  his  father,  in  the  per 
nicious  art  of  dancing.  He  had  read,  of  such  books  as 
fell  in  his  way,  those  that  fed  his  imagination,  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  the  story  of  Sinbad,  a  translation  of  Orlando 
Furioso,  and  voyages  and  travels.  We  gather  from  his 
memoir  that  he  was  a  lovely,  idle,  active-minded,  sensi 
tive  boy,  without  application,  longing  to  go  somewhere  on 
a  pilgrimage,  a  dreamer  of  dreams.  His  schooling  ended 
when  he  was  sixteen ;  it  is  evident  that  he  did  not  follow 
his  brothers  in  Columbia  College  because  he  had  no 
sort  of  tendency  toward  discipline  and  application.  Be 
cause  he  must  have  some  career,  and  he  developed  nei 
ther  inclination  for  college  nor  for  business,  he  was  put 
into  a  law  office.  But  law  he  never  seriously  studied. 
The  career  of  ambition  at  that  time  was  politics,  and 
that  was  best  entered  through  the  law.  Irving  was  not 
robust ;  there  was  in  the  family  circumstances  no  press 
ing  need  of  his  earning  a  living,  and  he  was  left  to  drift 
along  in  vague  expectation  of  what  might  turn  up. 
What  happened  was  that  the  boy  dipped  into  litera- 


18  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

ture  in  a  hap-hazard  manner  while  seated  amid  the  law 
books,  assimilating  no  doubt  eagerly  what  suited  his 
purpose,  and  cultivated  his  equally  strong  taste  for 
society.  He  had  a  great  love  of  music,  and  he  early  ac 
quired  a  taste  for  the  theatre.  His  first  indulgence  in 
this  prohibited  amusement  was  in  company  with  a  boy 
somewhat  his  senior,  named  James  K.  Paulding,  whose 
sister  was  the  wife  of  Washington's  brother  William. 
When  once  the  delight  was  tasted,  the  boy  repeated  it  as 
often  as  possible,  and  as  the  theatre  was  near  his  home, 
he  learned  how  to  sandwich  the  nine  o'clock  family  pray 
ers  between  the  chief  play  and  the  after-piece ;  that  is, 
he  stole  home  from  the  theatre  in  time  for  the  devotion, 
then  pretended  to  go  to  bed,  but  escaped  out  of  his  bed 
room  window  down  the  roof,  and  was  soon  again  in  his 
seat,  an  excited  spectator  of  the  mimic  world.  New  York 
had  enjoyed  a  regular  theatre  since  1750,  but  its  quality 
we  can  infer  from  Irving's  no  doubt  very  good  descrip 
tion  of  it  in  the  "  Jonathan  Oldstyle  "  letters,  and  from 
his  recommendation :  "  To  the  actors — less  etiquette,  less 
fustian,  less  buckram.  To  the  orchestra — new  music, 
and  more  of  it.  To  the  pit — patience,  clean  benches,  and 
umbrellas.  To  the  boxes — less  affectation,  less  noise, 
less  coxcombs.  To  the  gallery — less  grog,  and  better 
constables ;  and,  To  the  whole  house,  inside  and  out — 
a  total  reformation." 

The  lad's  delicate  health  would  partly  account  for  his 
disinclination  to  any  routine   pursuit  or  severe   study. 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  19 

Before  lie  was  seventeen  symptoms  of  pulmonary  disease 
developed,  and  travel  and  sojourn  in  the  country  were 
tried.  We  find  him  hunting  in  the  Sleepy  Hollow  region, 
and  making  journeys  up  the  Hudson,  and  to  the  Mohawk, 
where  he  had  a  married  sister  residing.  There  was  at 
that  time  delightful  society  in  Albany  and  Schenectady, 
which  was  attractive  to  the  young  man,  and  made  as 
decided  an  impression  on  him  as  the  scenery  of  the 
Hudson,  which  he  was  the  first  to  celebrate.  The 
charms  of  natural  scenery  seldom  get  any  popular  recog 
nition  except  through  a  literary  culture. 

In  1802  Irving  became  a  clerk  in  the  law  office  of 
Josiah  Ogden  Hoffman,  and  formed  the  family  intimacy 
which  had  such  an  influence  upon  his  career.  The  office, 
however,  did  not  confine  him ;  he  renewed  his  travels,  and 
with  Mr.  Hoffman  made  the  then  difficult  woods  journey 
to  Ogdensburg,  and  as  far  as  Montreal,  enduring  some 
of  the  pleasures  of  roughing  it,  and  making  acquaintance 
with  the  Eed  Man,  who  was  not  attractive  to  him,  but 
whose  unjust  treatment  by  our  government  aroused  his 
indignation  not  many  years  after.  It  was  while  he  was 
a  law  clerk,  and  when  he  was  nineteen  years  old,  that 
he  wrote  for  the  Chronicle,  a  newspaper  established  by  his 
brother  Peter,  a  series  of  articles  on  the  theatres  and 
the  manners  of  the  town,  signed  "Jonathan  Oldstyle." 
These  attracted  a  great  deal  of  local  attention,  and  pro 
cured  for  Irving  the  acquaintance  of  Charles  Brockden 
Brown,  and  an  offer  from  him  of  employment  on  a  liter- 


20  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

ary  periodical.  That  these  juvenile  imitations  of  English 
essays  were  copied  and  quoted  and  applauded  shows  the 
extreme  literary  dearth  of  the  time,  and  the  eagerness  to 
get  out  of  the  conventional  style  of  newspaper  writing. 
The  papers  were  saucy  and  readable,  and  not  without  wit, 
and  they  contain  a  passage  or  two  of  manly  sensibility, 
notably  one  in  which  the  boy  exhibits  his  chivalry  to 
wards  women  by  making  an  indignant  protest  against 
the  heartless  way  in  which  maiden  ladies  are  commonly 
spoken  of.  Slight  as  these  papers  were,  and  worthless  as 
they  are  now,  except  as  a  landmark  of  the  author's  devel 
opment,  we  have  to  note  of  them  that  they  were  popular, 
that  they  had  a  certain  personal  flavor  that  attracted  at 
tention  and  gave  pleasure,  and  that  this  must  be  said  of 
nearly  every  thing  that  Irving  wrote  thereafter.  What 
ever  critics  may  say  of  his  writings,  they  had  from  the 
first  this  quality  that  gained  them  instant  recognition  and 
made  them  enjoyed. 

We  see  now  that  the  boy  had  the  artistic  tempera 
ment  ;  his  love  of  the  picturesque  and  the  adventurous  in 
books,  his  fondness  for  music  and  the  theatre,  and  his 
idle,  dreaming  way,  which  begat  little  hope  of  him  in  his 
father's  eyes,  declare  this.  When  he  went  to  Europe 
and  came  in  contact  with  an  old  civilization,  with  a  soci 
ety  ordered  by  etiquette  and  refinement  and  luxury,  he 
was  not  a  stranger  to  it,  and  he  entered  into  all  the 
amenities  of  life,  into  the  enjoyment  of  art  and  music  and 
historical  associations,  like  one  native  and  born  thereto. 


CHAELES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  21 

All  this  has  a  close  connection  with  the  tone  of  his  litera 
ture  and  with  its  quality.  Considering  his  surroundings 
in  a  commercial  and  not  artistic  and  not  very  intellectual 
city,  in  a  land  staring  new  and  fighting  for  its  position, 
which  got  its  literature,  and  to  some  extent  its  manners, 
second-hand  from  England,  this  absence  of  what  it  is 
now  fashionable  to  call  "  provincialism "  in  young  Irving 
is  very  remarkable.  And  when  I  couple  with  this  the 
fact  that  he  was  always,  boy  and  man,  an  ardent  patriot, 
an  ingrained  American,  and  never  in  art  an  affected  cog 
noscente,  nor  in  manner  the  least  bit  the  "  snob,"  I  see 
why  he  was  able  to  contribute  to  the  elevation  of  the 
taste  of  his  countrymen  and  to  their  culture  in  what  is 
best  in  the  old  civilizations,  and  at  the  same  time  to  re 
tain  their  affection.  But  it  must  be  said  that  up  to  the 
time  Irving  went  abroad  the  second  time,  his  chief  ambi 
tion  seemed  to  be  to  shine  as  a  man  of  society,  and  he 
had  the  appearance  of  valuing  his  achievements  with  the 
pen  only  as  a  means  to  social  distinction. 

That  Irving  had  an  inborn  bent  to  literature,  and  that 
he  was  in  fact  good  for  nothing  else,  we  can  see  now,  but 
his  circumstances  offered  no  inducement  for  the  career  he 
finally  adopted.  So  far  as  we  know,  there  was  but  one 
man  in  America  who  had  adopted  literature  as  a  profes 
sion — Charles  Brockden  Brown,  whose  strange  romances 
had  little  popular  recognition.  American  literature  did 
not  exist.  The  autobiography  of  Benjamin  Franklin, 
which  deserves  a  very  high  place  in  it,  was  not  published 


22  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

— thanks  to  his  degenerate  son — till  1817.  The  best 
writing  of  the  past  two  centuries — a  period  fertile  in  poli 
tical  essays — on  the  science  of  government  had  been 
done  in  America,  and  of  controversial  theology  and  po 
lemical  verse  there  was  no  lack  ;  but  Irving  was  the  first 
to  enter  the  field  of  literature,  the  first  to  awaken  his 
countrymen  to  a  consciousness  of  their  capacities  in  this 
direction,  and  to  announce  to  the  world  that  America 
proposed  to  take  a  hand  in  it.  That  his  first  effort  (the 
"  Salmagundi  ")  was  an  imitation  is  not  surprising,  and 
that  he  did  not  absolutely  break  with  the  old  is  no  doubt 
one  reason  why  he  obtained  so  quick  foreign  recognition. 
This  country  at  first  would  seem  to  be  quite  barren  of 
food  for  the  imagination  of  such  a  writer  as  Irving,  who 
was  always  a  backward-looking  man,  whose  mind  dwelt 
more  willingly  in  traditions  than  in  the  present.  Ours 
is  the  only  nation  that  has  no  folk-lore — no  misty  past ; 
the  sun  shines  plainly  on  our  first  beginnings.  However 
morally  sublime,  they  are  visibly  prosaic.  Our  best  ef 
forts  to  put  the  Bed  Man,  our  only  prehistoric  posses 
sion,  in  a  romantic  light  are  sad  failures  in  the  main. 
Irving  (in  the  Knickerbocker  and  the  Hudson  Biver  leg 
ends)  remedied  for  the  region  in  which  he  lived  some 
thing  of  this  defect  in  romance  and  tradition,  and  his 
achievement  is  unique  in  modern  times ;  it  amounted  to 
a  creation,  and  it  is  performed  with  a  simplicity  that 
makes  the  result  all  the  more  surprising.  And  it  is  also 
to  be  noted  that  although  permanent,  and  almost  as  well 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  23 

based  in  the  popular  mind  as  veritable  history,  the  ele 
ments  of  it  are  humorous,  and  have  little  of  the  common 
seriousness  of  the  myth. 

In  1804,  when  Irving  came  of  age,  he  was  in  such  dan 
ger  of  a  speedy  departure  from  this  world  by  the  door  of 
consumption,  that  his  brothers  determined  to  try  the  ef 
fect  of  a  sea  voyage,  and  sent  him  to  Europe.  He  was 
abroad  almost  two  years,  and  the  journey  restored  his 
health.  It  was  not  fruitful  in  a  literary  way.  He  wrote 
many  charming  letters,  however,  in  which  we  discover 
his  perfect  accommodation  to  the  society,  art,  and  luxury 
he  enjoyed.  His  journey  lay  through  France,  and  by  way 
of  Genoa  to  Sicily,  and  thence  to  Rome.  It  was  a  time 
of  disturbance  and  insecurity  of  travel ;  Napoleon's  spies 
followed  and  detained  him  in  France  ;  the  vessel  in  which 
he  went  to  Sicily  was  overhauled  by  pirates ;  he  had  to 
dodge  the  cruisers  in  a  fruit  boat  to  get  across  to  Naples. 
In  Eome  he  was  so  seduced  by  the  climate,  the  conge 
nial  antiquity,  the  art,  and  the  charm  of  the  company  of 
Washington  Allston,  with  whom  he  there  contracted  a 
life-long  friendship,  that  he  was  upon  the  point  of  em 
bracing  the  profession  of  a  painter.  He  had  a  good  eye 
for  color,  and  in  Allston's  stimulating  society  the  art  no 
doubt  seemed  easy,  but  he  reflected  that  inclination  is 
not  genius,  and  went  on  his  idle  way.  He  passed  several 
months  in  Paris,  which  was  more  to  his  taste  than  any 
other  foreign  city,  studying  French  and  diligently  fre 
quenting  the  theatres  and  the  opera,  and  made  a  short 


24  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

sojourn  in  London.  This  was  not  an  energetic  pilgrim 
age,  and  lie  disappointed  his  brothers  in  not  travelling 
more,  and  taking  more  advantage  of  his  opportunities. 
But  he  was  not  to  be  forced  out  of  his  humor.  His  letters 
of  the  period  abound  in  faithful  and  vivid  descriptions  of 
what  interested  him  in  scenery  and  historical  remains ; 
but  what  interested  him  especially  was  society,  and  he 
had  the  entry  and  was  a  favorite  in  the  best  whenever  he 
chose  to  seek  it.  Society,  indeed,  was  his  natural  ele 
ment  ;  he  began  in  it  early,  and  perhaps  no  other  author 
of  his  repute  was  more  immersed  in  it  than  he  was,  as  he 
somewhere  remarks,  for  the  better  part  of  half  a  century. 
And  yet  he  was  formed  for  intimate  friendships,  and  bet 
ter  than  society  he  liked  the  quiet  intercourse  of  the  do 
mestic  circle.  Had  his  longing  for  happiness  in  that  been 
gratified  by  marriage,  we  can  only  speculate  upon  the 
effect  on  his  literary  career.  His  literature  might  have 
lacked  a  certain  element  of  sentiment  and  longing  which 
contributed  greatly  to  its  popularity. 

Upon  his  return,  without  any  settled  plans,  and  cer 
tainly  with  no  expectation  of  a  literary  life,  he  pulled 
together  enough  legal  information  to  pass  a  lenient  ex 
amination,  and  was  admitted  to  the  bar.  Having  accom 
plished  this,  he  gave  himself  up  to  such  pleasures  as  the 
town  afforded.  He  was  "  champion  of  the  tea-parties,"  a 
gallant  in  any  city  he  visited,  and  had  a  large  social  ac 
quaintance  in  New  York,  Albany,  Philadelphia,  and  Bal 
timore.  He  was  one  of  a  set  of  young  fellows  in  New 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  25 

York  who  united  some  literary  taste  with  convivial  habits, 
and  posed  for  "  sad  dogs."  They  made  much  of  cheap 
feasts  at  city  porter-houses,  and  something  mysterious  of 
revelries  at  Cockloft  Hall,  an  old  mansion  on  the  Pas- 
saic,  described  in  "  Salmagundi."  There  wasn't  much 
harm  done  in  the  end,  for  all  these  terrible  roysterers  had 
shelters  in  sweet  homes,  and  the  constant  company  of 
pure  and  lovely  women  who  united  discretion  with  wit 
and  engaging  manners.  The  habit  of  the  day  was  free 
and  unconventional  we  infer,  and  prudery  was  probably 
not  a  necessary  sign  or  protection  of  innocence  in  either 
sex;  the  conversation  even  of  gentlemen  was  garnished 
with  strange  oaths  ;  at  the  suppers  there  was  hard,  con 
scientious  drinking  and  much  bacchanalian  singing,  and 
it  was  considered  better  for  a  man  to  go  under  the  table 
from  the  effects  of  the  compulsory  bumper  than  to  de 
cline  it. 

Irving  tried  a  little  local  politics  at  this  time  as  a 
stepping-stone  to  an  appointment ;  but  his  experience  in 
the  Sixth  Ward  disgusted  him,  and  his  feeble  solicitation 
at  Albany  got  him  no  office;  indeed  he  couldn't  run 
with  the  hungry  pack  of  office-seekers,  and  he  speedily 
gave  up  the  idea  of  saving  his  country  on  a  government 
salary. 

Irving' s  private  letters  of  this  period  show  a  little 
affectation  of  knowing  the  world,  a  callowness,  in  short, 
which  is  absent  from  his  European  correspondence,  and 
shows,  may  be,  that  he  had  fallen  back  into  the  so-called 


26  WASHINGTON  IR  VING. 

"  provincial "  conditions.  But  among  them  are  some  to  a 
belle  of  the  time,  Miss  Mary  Farlie,  "  the  fascinating  Far- 
lie,"  the  " Sophia  Sparke "  of  the  "Salmagundi,"  which 
reveal  the  man,  as  he  then  was,  his  devotion  to  the  calls 
of  fashion  and  the  rounds  of  tea-party  life  in  whatever 
city  he  chanced  to  be,  his  pleasure  in  the  little  flutter  of 
coquetry  with  which  the  serious  enjoyments  of  life  are 
prefaced,  but  also  his  fine,  pure  nature  and  his  chivalrous 
admiration  of  woman.  I  cannot  quote  at  length,  but  there 
is  a  passage  in  a  letter  to  Miss  Farlie  from  Richmond, 
where  he  was  attending  the  trial  of  Aaron  Burr,  in  which 
he  defends  the  sex  from  unworthy  motives  in  its  sympa 
thy  for  the  fallen  man,  and  declares  that  it  results  from 
the  merciful  and  heaven-born  disposition  implanted  in 
the  female  bosom,  which  ever  inclines  in  favor  of  the  ac 
cused  and  the  unfortunate,  and  he  adds,  "  I  love  your  sex 
ten  times  better  than  ever."  If  he  idealized  the  sex,  it 
must  be  said  that  his  conduct  towards  women  always 
conformed  to  his  romantic  ideal. 

Irving  was  now  twenty-four  years  old.  He  had  adopted 
no  business,  for  his  dallying  with  the  law  cannot  be  seri 
ously  considered.  He  was  not  a  student,  and  his  outfit 
for  life,  such  as  it  was,  had  been  gained  from  contact 
with  society  and  not  from  books.  His  first  literary  ven 
ture  was  about  to  be  tried,  and  perhaps  the  sort  of  edu 
cation  he  had  gained  contributed  not  a  little  to  the 
freshness  and  vigor  of  this  first  effort,  and  made  him 
apprehend  the  channel  by  which  the  popular  ear  could 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  27 

be  reached.  In  January,  1807,  "Washington,  his  brother 
William,  and  James  K.  Paulding  issued  the  first  number 
of  the  "  Salmagundi."  Never  did  a  modest  little  duo 
decimo  sheet  of  a  few  pages  make  more  stir  in  a  com 
munity.  Its  declared  purpose  was  "  simply  to  instruct 
the  young,  reform  the  old,  correct  the  town,  and  castigate 
the  age."  It  had  in  it  an  air  of  society  condescending  to 
literature.  In  manner  it  was  an  imitation  of  the  "  Spec 
tator  "  and  the  "  Citizen  of  the  World ; "  but  it  showed  so 
much  original  humor,  was  so  buoyantly  written,  so  auda 
cious,  affected  such  an  indifference  to  praise  or  profit,  was 
so  complacently  superior,  and  so  knowing  concerning  the 
"  whim-whams  "  of  the  town,  that  it  was  a  great  success 
from  the  start.  It  seemed,  notwithstanding  its  imitation, 
the  most  original  and  lively  of  all  native  productions,  and 
as  such  was  copied  and  imitated  in  other  cities.  After 
the  lapse  of  seventy-five  years,  a  good  deal  of  the  humor 
seems  overdone  and  antiquated,  a  good  deal  of  it  is 
puerile  and  dreary  fun  ;  but  I  find  it  on  the  whole  amus 
ing  reading,  and  worth  while  as  a  study  of  manners  at 
the  beginning  of  this  century.  After  running  for  twenty 
numbers  it  suddenly  stopped,  in  the  full  career  of  suc 
cess,  with  the  whimsical  indifference  to  the  public  its 
writers  had  always  pretended.  The  authors  made  little 
out  of  it  except  reputation,  and  quit  it  on  a  disagreement 
with  the  publisher,  just  when  Irving  was  kindling  up  to  the 
work.  He  himself  in  later  years  did  not  value  his  share 
in  it ;  but  the  critics  have  discovered  in  these  free  and 


28  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

irresponsible  essays,  the  germs  and  suggestions  of  nearly 
everything  he  did  afterwards,  and  some  critics  think  por 
tions  of  this  juvenile  performance  equal  to  anything  he 
produced  later  in  life ;  his  judgment  is,  however,  right 
about  it,  its  chief  value  lies  in  the  "everything  he  did 
afterwards." 

By  this  clever  experiment  Irving  discovered  and  tried 
his  powers,  and  his  career  was  determined  by  it,  although 
he  was  himself  unconscious  that  his  calling  was  fixed. 
He  was  still  the  inmate  of  a  law  office,  and  a  young  man 
about  town,  and  the  applause  of  the  widening  social  circle 
in  which  he  moved  was  probably  the  result  of  "  Salma 
gundi,"  which  he  most  prized.  He  had  already  extended 
his  acquaintance  to  Washington  and  Eichmond,  and  found 
more  or  less  attractions  in  every  city  where  beauty  and 
wit  had  leisure  for  that  sort  of  social  skirmishing  in 
which  he  delighted.  Knee-breeches  had  not  yet  gone 
out  of  vogue,  and  fashionable  life  still  retained  those 
ornaments  who  had  a  more  than  local  reputation  as 
"  beaux  "  and  "belles."  In  Irving's  devotion  to  the  oppo 
site  sex  there  was  a  touch  of  the  old-time  gallantry.  Per 
sonally  he  must  have  awakened  a  reciprocal  admiration. 
His  biographer,  with  a  characteristic  family  reticence 
of  personal  details,  has  given  no  personal  description 
of  our  author.  But  a  drawing  by  Vanderlyn  in  Paris  in 
1805,  and  a  portrait  by  Jarvis  in  1809,  present  him  to  us 
in  the  fresh  bloom  of  manly  beauty.  The  face  has  an  air 
of  distinction  and  gentle  breeding ;  the  refined  lines,  the 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  29 

poetic  chin,  the  sensitive  mouth,  the  shapely  nose,  the 
large  dreamy  eyes,  the  intellectual  forehead,  and  the 
clustering  brown  locks  are  our  ideal  of  the  writer  of  the 
"Sketch-Book"  and  the  "Pilgrim  in  Spain."  A  relation, 
who  saw  much  of  our  author  in  his  latter  years,  writes 
me  :  "  He  had  dark  gray  eyes,  a  handsome  straight  nose, 
which  might  perhaps  be  called  large ;  a  broad,  high,  full 
forehead,  and  a  small  mouth.  I  should  call  him  of  me 
dium  height,  about  five  feet  eight  and  one  half  to  nine 
inches,  and  inclined  to  be  a  trifle  stout.  There  was  no 
peculiarity  about  his  voice  ;  but  it  was  pleasant,  and  had 
a  good  intonation.  His  smile  was  exceedingly  genial, 
lightening  up  his  whole  face,  and  rendering  it  very  at 
tractive  ;  while  if  he  were  about  to  say  anything  humor 
ous,  it  would  beam  forth  from  his  eyes  even  before  the 
words  were  spoken.  As  a  young  man,  his  face  was  ex 
ceedingly  handsome,  and  his  head  was  well  covered  with 
dark  hair ;  but  from  my  earliest  recollections  of  him,  he 
wore  neither  whiskers  nor  moustache,  but  a  dark  brown 
wig,  which,  although  it  made  him  look  younger,  concealed 
a  beautifully  shaped  head." 

It  was  some  months  after  the  discontinuance  of  "Sal 
magundi"  that  the  work  was  projected  which  was  to 
give  our  author  fame.  It  grew  out  of  a  literary  freak. 
In  connection  with  his  brother  Peter,  who  had  considera 
ble  literary  talent  and  a  severer  taste  than  Washington  at 
the  time,  he  began  a  mock  history,  in  burlesque  of  "  A 
Picture  of  New  York,"  by  Dr.  Samuel  Mitchell,  just  pub- 


30  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

lished,  and  intended  as  a  travesty  on  that  and  other  con 
temporary  pedantic  lore.  This  joint  composition  accounts 
for  the  chief  fault  of  the  Knickerbocker ;  the  book  was 
well  advanced  and  consisted  of  a  mass  of  erudite  and 
rather  juvenile  nonsense,  when  Peter  was  called  by  his 
business  to  Europe,  and  Irving  was  left  to  finish  the  work. 
In  his  hands  the  conception  changed;  he  limited  the 
scope  of  the  history  to  the  period  of  the  Dutch  governors, 
for  the  sake  of  epic  unity,  and  compressed  the  mass  of 
affected  learning  into  five  introductory  chapters.  He  sub 
sequently  wished  that  he  had  reduced  it  to  one  chapter ; 
a  further  improvement  would  have  been  to  throw  away 
that  one.  In  his  humorous  fancy  the  time  of  the  Dutch 
rule  became  the  poetic  age  of  the  city ;  this  conception 
expanded  into  a  unique  portraiture  of  race  and  character, 
and  "  The  History  of  New  York,  by  Diedrich  Knicker 
bocker,"  was  finished  substantially  as  we  have  it  now. 
This  was  in  1809,  when  Irving  was  twenty-six  years  old. 

But  before  this  humorous  creation  was  completed,  the 
author  endured  the  terrible  bereavement  which  was  to 
color  his  whole  life.  He  had  formed  a  deep  and  tender 
passion  for  Matilda  Hoffman,  the  second  daughter  of  Jo- 
siah  Ogden  Hoffman,  in  whose  family  he  had  long  been 
on  a  footing  of  the  most  perfect  intimacy ;  and  his  ardent 
love  was  fully  reciprocated.  Irving  was  restlessly  cast 
ing  about  for  some  assured  means  of  livelihood,  which 
would  enable  him  to  marry, — perhaps  his  distrust  of  a 
literary  career  was  connected  with  this  desire, — when, 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  31 

almost  without  warning,  Miss  Hoffman  died,  in  the  eigh 
teenth  year  of  her  age.  "Without  being  a  dazzling  beauty, 
she  was  lovely  in  person  and  mind,  with  most  engaging 
manners,  a  refined  sensibility,  and  a  delicate  and  playful 
humor.  The  loss  was  a  crushing  blow  to  Irving,  from 
the  effects  of  which  he  never  recovered,  although  time 
softened  the  bitterness  of  his  grief  into  a  tender  and 
sacred  memory.  He  could  never  bear  any  allusion  to 
her,  even  from  his  most  intimate  friends.  After  his 
death,  in  a  private  repository,  of  which  he  always  kept 
the  key,  was  found  a  lovely  miniature,  a  braid  of  fair 
hair,  and  a  strip  of  paper  on  which  was  written,  in  his 
own  hand,  "  Matilda  Hoffman ; "  and  with  these  treasures 
were  several  pages  of  a  memorandum,  in  ink  long  since 
faded.  He  kept  through  life  her  Bible  and  her  Prayer 
Book ;  they  were  placed  nightly  under  his  pillow  in  the 
first  days  of  anguish  that  followed  her  loss,  and  ever 
after  they  were  the  inseparable  companions  of  all  his 
wanderings.  This  memorandum,  it  subsequently  ap 
peared,  was  a  copy  of  a  letter  addressed  to  Mrs.  Foster, 
a  married  lady,  in  which  the  story  of  his  early  love  was 
related  as  a  reason  why  he  had  never  married.  It  was  in 
1823,  while  he  sojourned  in  Dresden,  that  he  became  inti 
mate  with  an  English  family  residing  there,  named  Fos 
ter,  and  conceived  for  the  daughter,  Miss  Emily  Foster,  a 
deep  attachment.  The  Fosters  believed  that  this  would 
have  resulted  in  marriage  if  the  lady's  affections  had  not 
been  preoccupied.  Irving's  biographer  thinks  otherwise, 


32  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

and  gives  reasons  for  believing  that  he  could  not  at  that 
time  have  entertained  a  project  of  matrimony.  It  is  not 
for  us  to  question  his  judgment,  with  his  full  knowledge 
of  the  circumstances ;  yet  it  is  evident  that  Irving  was 
very  seriously  impressed  and  very  much  unsettled  until 
he  drove  away  the  impression  by  hard  work  with  his 
pen ;  and  it  would  be  nothing  new  in  human  nature  and 
experience  if  he  had,  for  the  time,  yielded  to  the  attrac 
tions  of  loveliness  and  a  most  congenial  companionship, 
and  had  returned  again  to  an  exclusive  devotion  to  the 
image  of  the  early  loved  and  lost.  That  bereavement  cast 
a  cloud  over  his  otherwise  gay  disposition  which  was 
never  altogether  dissipated,  and  gave  an  abiding  tinge 
of  melancholy  to  his  life.  Its  effect  upon  his  literature  is 
not  less  discernible ;  it  appears  here  and  there  in  cer 
tain  half-tones  of  tenderness.  I  think  its  sentiment  per 
vades  the  "Sketch-Book;"  a  touching  passage  in  Eural 
Funerals  is  colored  by  this  memory ;  and  we  recognize 
the  note  in  a  passage  in  St.  Mark's  Eve  in  "Brace- 
bridge  Hall,"  beginning,  "  I  have  loved  as  I  never  again 
shall  love  in  this  world — I  have  been  loved  as  I  never 
again  shall  be  loved."  The  two  months  after  this  event 
Irving  spent  in  retirement;  but  solitude  was  as  insup 
portable  as  society,  and  the  author,  who  never  for  long 
nursed  a  grief  in  idle  repining,  sought  relief  in  the  com 
pletion  of  his  book.  He  felt  himself  that  the  spirit  was 
taken  out  of  it,  and  never  looked  back  to  its  composition 
with  pleasure.  The  loving  eyes  that  he  expected  to  see 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  33 

dance  with,  sympathetic  merriment  in  its  perusal  would 
never  see  its  pages. 

The  History,  which  was  first  printed  in  Philadelphia, 
to  avoid  a  premature  disclosure  of  its  character,  was  her 
alded  by  a  series  of  preparatory  advertisements,  intended 
to  awaken  interest  in  a  genuine  historical  work.  Informa 
tion  was  desired  of  a  small,  elderly  gentleman,  dressed  in 
an  old  black  coat  and  cocked  hat,  who  had  disappeared 
from  his  lodgings  in  the  city.  After  a  few  days  it  was 
announced  that  this  person  had  left  behind  a  curious 
manuscript,  which  his  landlord  would  be  obliged  to  sell 
if  the  old  gentleman  did  not  return  and  settle  for  his 
board  and  lodging.  This  advertising  device  was  so  suc 
cessful  that  one  of  the  city  authorities  came  to  consult 
Irving' s  brother  on  the  propriety  of  offering  a  reward  for 
the  missing  Diedrich.  The  announcement  of  the  book 
was  that  of  a  grave  history  of  the  colony  and  city  under 
the  Dutch  government,  and  the  author  carried  his  whim 
so  far  as  to  dedicate  it  to  the  New  York  Historical  Soci 
ety,  a  liberty  which  a  little  nettled  the  grave  antiquarians 
of  that  body.  Great  was  the  astonishment  of  those  who 
sat  down  to  a  perusal  of  it  as  a  veritable  history  to  find, 
instead,  a  whimsical  and  lightly  satirical  portrait  of  their 
ancestors.  Such  a  piece  of  irreverence  shocked  and  con 
founded  them.  His  friend  Mrs.  Hoffman  wrote  him  at 
Philadelphia,  on  its  first  appearance  :  "  Your  good  friend 
the  old  lady  [the  mother  of  Josiah  Ogden  Hoffman]  came 
home  in  a  great  stew  this  evening.  Such  a  scandalous 


34  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

story  had  got  about  town — a  book  had  come  out,  called  a 
History  of  New  York  ;  nothing  but  a  satire  and  ridicule 
of  the  old  Dutch  people — and  they  said  you  was  the  au 
thor  ;  but  from  this  foul  slander,  I'll  venture  to  say,  she 
has  defended  you.  She  was  quite  in  a  heat  about  it." 
So  were  others.  Some  of  Irving's  best  friends,  old  ladies 
of  Albany  and  Schenectady,  were  deeply  offended,  and 
vowed  the  author  should  never  be  received  again  in  soci 
ety;  so  deep  and  lasting  was  the  irritation  that  Mr. 
Gulian  C.  Verplanck,  Irving's  friend,  in  an  address  before 
the  Historical  Society  as  late  as  1818,  while  compliment 
ing  the  author,  criticised  the  book  as  a  "  coarse  cari 
cature."  But  Irving's  amiable  grace  soon  dissipated 
most  of  the  social  clouds,  and  even  the  Dutch  critics, 
when  they  had  comprehended  the  abounding  and  unmali- 
cious  humor  of  the  composition,  forgave  the  author,  and 
enjoyed  it  with  the  rest  of  the  world.  They  did  not  then 
know  that  Irving  was  issuing  to  them  almost  the  only 
patent  of  nobility  that  has  been  given  in  this  country. 
Outside  the  Dutch  families  the  History  was  hailed  with 
universal  delight,  as  the  most  witty  and  original  produc 
tion  from  any  American  pen.  The  first  foreign  author  to 
recognize  its  peculiar  merit  was  Walter  Scott,  who  read 
it  aloud  in  his  family,  till  their  sides  were  sore  with 
laughing,  he  asserts,  and  who  saw  in  it  a  close  resem 
blance  to  Dean  Swift,  and  indications  of  powers  that  re 
minded  him  of  Sterne. 
The  book  is,  however,  an  original  creation,  and  has  no 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  35 

forerunner  in  English  literature.  In  spontaneity  and 
joyous  vigor  it  must  be  assigned  a  place  among  the  pro 
ductions  of  the  springtime  of  national  literatures.  Of  its 
humor  one  is  tempted  to  use  the  words  grotesque  and 
gigantic,  but  we  must  add  youthful.  It  is  a  masterpiece, 
and  I  think  Irving's  masterpiece,  though  not  in  style ;  a 
very  little  of  the  mock-heroic  usually  wearies,  and  nothing 
but  genius  of  the  first  order  in  humor  could  carry  off  a 
volume  of  it.  The  creation  may  be  described  as  an  event 
rather  than  a  book.  No  other  American  conception  has 
so  entered  into  the  popular  mind.  The  whimsicality  has 
a  certain  historical  solidity.  The  Knickerbocker  legend 
is  something  more  than  a  legend,  something  more  than  a 
tradition,  it  is  the  creation  of  a  caste,  a  society,  it  fixed 
upon  the  metropolis  of  the  New  "World  an  ineffaceable 
character,  a  sort  of  romantic  illusion.  No  other  author 
of  modern  times  has  performed  any  such  feat  as  this.  It 
has  assumed  such  proportions  and  importance,  that  it 
almost  passes  beyond  the  bounds  of  a  literary  creation. 
Millions  of  people  who  accept  the  Knickerbocker  as 
sumption  as  a  verity,  and  use  the  name  for  a  thousand 
purposes,  never  read  the  History;  just  as  millions  of 
people  are  on  familiar  terms  with  Gulliver  who  never 
read  a  line  of  Swift,  and  count  Don  Quixote  a  part  of 
their  mental  furniture  without  knowing  the  name  of  Cer 
vantes.  This  popular  diffusion  stamps  the  work  as  one 
of  the  few  masterpieces  of  humor,  and  makes  almost 
impertinent  a  literary  criticism  of  the  book.  It  may  be 


36  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

said,  however,  that  its  effect  upon  the  modern  reader  is 
marred  by  the  surplusage  of  the  introductory  matter,  the 
elephantine  fun  of  which  is  no  longer  funny,  and  that  in 
places  the  breadth  of  the  humor  was  better  suited  to  a 
former  age  than  it  is  to  this.  But  whatever  may  be  said 
of  the  juvenile  expansion  of  its  style,  I  take  it  that  no  one 
would  care  to  undertake  to  mend  it,  or  to  disturb  in  any 
way  the  richest  piece  of  native  humor  that  the  country 
has  produced. 

In  Irving's  preface  to  the  revised  edition  of  the  His 
tory  published  in  1848,  he  speaks  of  its  aim  :  "  It  was  to 
embody  the  conditions  of  our  city  in  an  amusing  form ; 
to  illustrate  its  local  humors,  customs,  and  peculiarities  ; 
to  clothe  home  scenes  and  places  and  familiar  names 
with  those  imaginative  and  whimsical  associations  so 
seldom  met  with  in  our  country,  but  which  live  like 
charms  and  spells  about  the  cities  of  the  old  world,  bind 
ing  the  heart  of  the  native  inhabitant  to  his  home."  The 
effect,  however,  was  far  beyond  this,  and  the  work  made 
itself  felt  for  a  long  time  in  the  literary  production  of 
the  city.  There  grew  up  in  time,  with  the  addition  of 
other  influences,  what  was  known  as  the  "  Knickerbocker 
School,"  which  had  its  type  in  the  Knickerbocker  Maga 
zine.  These  other  influences  were  not  altogether  local. 
There  broke  out  some  time  before  the  century  was  half 
completed  a  sentimental  development,  a  sort  of  literary 
measles,  which  pervaded  all  the  light  literature,  and  even 
the  newspapers.  Amidst  some  genuine  pathos  and  fine 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  37 

writing,  there  prevailed  this  rash  of  sentimentality,  a 
mawkish  and  lachrymose  tone  in  verse  and  prose — lines 
to  dead  babies,  mewlings  over  old  letters  and  blighted 
hopes,  the  dead,  dead  past,  and  the  like — which  continued 
more  or  less  woe  among  us  till  the  modern  "  humorist " 
scoffed  it  out  of  existence.  This  sentimental  outbreak 
was  intimately  connected  with  the  great  moral  and  re 
form  agitations  of  the  time,  by  some  sort  of  affinity  that 
it  would  be  interesting  to  trace.  Another  element  came 
in  to  make  the  Knickerbocker  School;  it  was  a  light 
thing,  and  I  do  not  like  to  insist  too  much  on  it ;  it  may 
be  described  as  "  society  "  literature,  and  Mr.  N.  P.  Willis 
was  its  hierophant.  This  very  clever  man,  who  was  the 
most  dexterous  phrase-maker  of  his  day,  and  had  a  cer 
tain  grace  in  his  verbal  touch — it  had  in  it  the  art  of  tying 
a  cravat  with  careless  and  killing  ease — imparted  to  the 
sweetest  sentiment  an  air  of  persiflage,  and  whipped  up 
emotions  into  an  agreeable  syllabub,  which  had  the  flavor 
and  permanence  of  an  ice  confection  taken  between  dances 
at  a  ball.  Irving,  as  we  have  seen,  was  a  man  of  society, 
and  he  was  able  to  make  even  society  accept  his  litera 
ture,  but  it  was  by  no  such  process  as  this.  The  Knick 
erbocker  School  was  affected  in  its  wit  and  vivacity  as  it 
was  in  its  sentiment ;  it  was  unfruitful,  and  insincere,  if 
that  is  not  too  severe  a  word  to  use  towards  a  coterie 
whose  chief  sin  was  mutual  admiration  of  mediocrity.  I 
mention  it  here  in  connection  with  Irving,  because  the 
whole  thing  has  been  more  or  less  directly  laid  to  his 


38  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

charge.  A  cynical  sort  of  criticism,  which  swings  a  shil- 
lalah  with  a  hilarious  pleasure,  merely  for '  delight  in 
smashing,  and  finds  nothing  in  life  really  amusing  except 
"earnestness,"  has  included  Irving  in  its  otherwise  not 
too-sweeping  estimate  of  this  "  School."  But  I  can  find 
no  warrant  for  the  sentimental  gush  of  his  followers  in 
his  manly  sentiment ;  they  had  neither  his  simple,  whole 
some  humor,  nor  his  transparent  style,  nor  his  high  pur 
pose  as  an  artist.  Irving  abounded  in  sentiment,  but  his 
artistic  sense  of  "good  form" — to  borrow  a  modern 
phrase — kept  him  on  the  safe  side  almost  always  in  its 
expression.  Besides,  I  am  disposed  to  stick  for  the  value 
to  the  world  of  sentiment  in  literature — such  sentiment 
as  Irving' s — and  to  doubt  whether  we  have  gained  any 
thing  by  becoming  ashamed  of  our  emotions. 

The  favorable  reception  of  the  History  far  exceeded 
Irving's  expectations.  He  found  himself  at  once  famous. 
Wherever  he  went  he  was  the  centre  of  attraction.  For 
a  time  this  distinction  gratified  and  amused  him,  but  the 
moment  the  excitement  was  over  he  fell  into  a  despon 
dency,  and  tried  in  vain  to  keep  up  his  spirits.  He  is 
very  frank  about  his  feelings  at  this  time  ;  he  admits  that 
he  made  an  effort  to  form  other  attachments,  but,  he 
says,  "  my  heart  would  not  hold  on,  it  would  continually 
recur  to  what  it  had  lost."  But  for  this  dejection  it 
would  be  strange,  after  his  extraordinary  success,  that  he 
should  still  have  hesitated  to  adopt  literature  as  his  pro 
fession.  But  for  two  years,  and  with  leisure,  he  did 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  39 

nothing.  He  had  even  hope  of  political  preferment  in  a 
small  way ;  and  he  entered  into  a  mercantile  partnership 
with  his  brothers,  which  was  to  involve  little  work  for 
him,  and  such  share  of  the  profits  as  should  assure  him 
support  and  leave  him  free  to  follow  his  literary  bent. 
Yet  he  seems  to  have  been  mainly  intent  upon  society 
and  the  amusement  of  the  passing  hour,  and,  without  the 
spur  of  necessity  to  his  literary  capacity,  he  yielded  to 
the  temptations  of  indolence,  and  settled  into  the  un 
promising  position  of  a  gentleman  of  leisure. 

The  peril  to  trade  involved  in  the  war  of  1812  gave 
him  forebodings,  and  aroused  him  to  some  effort.  He 
accepted  the  editorship  of  a  periodical  called  Select  Re 
views,  afterwards  changed  to  the  Analectic  Magazine,  for 
which  he  wrote  several  sketches,  some  of  which  were  in 
troduced  into  the  "  Sketch-Book,"  and  several  reviews  and 
naval  biographies.  But  the  slight  editorial  care  required 
was  irksome  to  a  man  who  had  an  unconquerable  repug 
nance  to  all  periodical  labor.  The  business  of  his  firm, 
and  of  other  New  York  importing  merchants,  sent  him 
often  to  Washington  to  look  after  their  interests.  These 
visits  greatly  extended  his  acquaintance  with  the  lead 
ing  men  of  the  country,  and,  as  usual,  brought  him  into 
the  thick  of  gayety  and  fashion.  His  political  leanings 
did  not  prevent  an  intimacy  with  the  President's  family, 
and  Mrs.  Madison  and  he  were  sworn  friends. 

Although  a  Federalist  and  an  admirer  of  England,  his 
sympathies  were  all  with  his  country  in  the  war  of  1812, 


40  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

and  he  took  active  service  on  the  military  staff  of  Gov 
ernor  Tompkins.  The  sudden  ending  of  the  war  defeated 
his  intention  of  entering  the  regular  army ;  and  in  1815 
he  made  a  visit  to  his  brother  Peter,  his  business  part 
ner,  in  England,  intending  only  a  brief  sojourn.  He  re 
mained  abroad  seventeen  years. 

The  first  part  of  Irving' s  five  years'  residence  in  Eng 
land  was  spent  in  the  harassments  of  business,  in  a  vain 
effort  to  extricate  the  affairs  of  his  firm  from  the  difficul 
ties  into  which  the  fluctuations  of  trade  had  cast  it.  His 
brother  Peter  was  an  invalid,  and  Irving  set  himself 
to  learn  the  mysteries  of  bookkeeping,  and  undertook 
all  the  uncongenial  drudgery  of  the  Liverpool  counting- 
house.  The  struggle  was  prolonged  through  two  years, 
when  the  brothers  were  compelled  to  seek  relief  in  bank 
ruptcy.  This  was  a  sore  trial,  and  he  felt  the  humilia 
tion  of  it  more  on  others'  account  than  his  own ;  the  ruin 
of  such  a  family  connection  in  business,  and  of  so  many 
honorable  hopes,  stung  him  chiefly  on  Peter's  account ;  to 
him  escape  from  uncongenial  employment  was  a  great  re 
lief,  and  he  was  quite  willing,  even  eager,  to  assume  the 
responsibilities  it  involved.  These  responsibilities,  I 
may  say  in  a  word,  were  practically  the  support  of  several 
of  his  relations  by  his  pen.  Up  to  this  time  he  had  fig 
ured  as  the  ornamental  genius  of  the  family,  and  he  had 
accepted  the  aid  his  brothers  lovingly  extended  to  him 
in  full  brotherly  confidence.  There  was  a  delightful  ab 
sence  of  any  feeling  of  obligation  or  dependence  on  either 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNEE.  41 

side.  Now  the  relations  were  changed,  but  there  was  no 
change  of  feeling.  A  common  purse  was  not  a  fiction  in 
this  case,  and  there  is  nothing  more  admirable  than  the 
care  Irving  took,  when  he  began  to  earn  money  with  his 
pen,  that  his  brother  Peter  should  feel  that  somehow  he 
conferred  a  favor  by  sharing  it.  During  the  temporary 
periods  of  Peter's  returning  health,  various  futile  busi 
ness  projects  were  set  on  foot  for  which  Washington 
furnished  the  capital,  and  which  had  at  least  the  ef 
fect  of  amusing  his  brother.  I  may  say  here  that  this 
loving  duty,  which  Irving  undertook  with  regard  to  his 
relations,  formed  a  great  part  of  the  pleasure  of  his  life ; 
Peter  was  supported  in  comfort  wherever  he  chose  to  re 
side,  and  on  Irving' s  return  to  America,  Sunny  side  be 
came  in  effect  the  home  of  the  whole  "  clan."  It  was  a 
family  of  marked  gifts  and  capacities,  the  brothers  all 
had  enviable  literary  talent,  and  the  sisters  were  women 
of  culture,  solid  character,  and  many  graces ;  but  perhaps 
the  greatest  gift  of  all  was  that  of  affection  and  unselfish 
nobility  of  spirit. 

Irving's  sister  Sarah  (Mrs.  Van  Wart)  was  living  with 
her  husband  and  family  in  Birmingham,  and  he  there 
found  a  home  and  refuge  in  the  midst  of  his  cares.  He 
was  far  from  robust,  and  was  at  times  incapacitated  for 
any  sort  of  work.  A  tormenting  cutaneous  malady,  which 
showed  itself  in  his  ankles,  made  walking  impossible,  and 
irritated  him  out  of  the  mood  of  composition.  All  his 
life  afterwards  he  was  assailed  by  this,  laid  up  for  months 


42  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

at  times,  driven  to  easy  travel  for  distraction,  and  sent  in 
search  of  the  healing  of  medical  springs.  This  malady 
was  cheerfully  and  heroically  borne,  but  it  accounts  for 
much  of  Irving's  occasional  depression,  and  to  some  ex 
tent  for  his  long  fits  of  literary  inactivity.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  a  physician  would  attribute  much  of  the 
loitering  and  wavering  in  his  pursuits  to  his  early  ill 
health  and  this  later  malady. 

During  the  time  of  his  business  perplexities  Irving  had 
made  several  excursions  in  England,  Wales,  and  Scot 
land,  the  fruits  of  which  were  to  appear  afterwards,  and 
he  had  obtained  that  knowledge  of  the  English  people, 
and  sympathy  with  what  was  admirable  in  English  life, 
which  made  acceptable  to  them  what  he  wrote,  even 
when  he  criticised.  He  also  had  formed  acquaintance 
and  friendship  with  many  of  the  prominent  English  au 
thors  of  the  day,  and  was  insured  a  certain  amount  of 
literary  encouragement. 

In  August,  1818,  Irving  went  up  to  London  and  cast 
himself  upon  the  fortune  of  his  pen.  It  was  a  bold  step ; 
it  exhibits  a  modest  confidence  in  his  own  abilities,  and 
in  connection  with  his  family  responsibilities  the  good 
fibre  of  the  man.  Thereafter  he  was  not  to  be  turned 
from  his  career.  He  discountenanced  efforts  at  home  to 
obtain  for  him  a  diplomatic  appointment,  and  to  the 
chagrin  and  mortification  of  his  brothers,  who  evidently 
had  no  confidence  in  literature  as  a  profession,  he  de 
clined  an  offered  situation  in  the  Navy  Department  at 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  43 

Washington.  The  spirit  in  which  he  set  about  his  work 
was  that  expressed  in  a  letter  to  his  brother  William 
in  1811 :  "  Whatever  I  may  write  in  future,  I  am  deter 
mined  upon  one  thing — to  dismiss  from  my  mind  all 
party  prejudice  and  feeling  as  much  as  possible,  and 
to  endeavor  to  contemplate  every  subject  with  a  candid 
and  good-natured  eye." 

This  was  the  time  of  the  "Sketch-Book."  The  story  of 
its  brilliant  success  has  been  often  told.  It  was  an  inter 
national  event,  and  we  cannot  now  do  justice  to  the  book 
without  recalling  the  circumstances  in  which  it  appeared 
and  the  motive  that  dictated  it.  The  first  number  was 
published  in  America,  in  May,  1819,  when  the  author  was 
thirty-six  years  old.  It  contained  only  The  Voyage,  Ros- 
coe,  The  Wife,  and  Eip  Van  Winkle.  The  second  instal 
ment  contained  Eural  Life  in  England,  The  Broken 
Heart,  English  Writers  on  America,  and  The  Art  of  Book- 
making.  The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow  did  not  appear 
till  the  sixth  instalment,  and  the  whole  was  completed 
in  America  in  September,  1820.  It  had  not  been  origi 
nally  the  author's  intention  to  publish  it  in  England ;  but 
the  news  of  its  success  in  America  came  over,  the  num 
bers  began  to  be  reprinted  without  authority,  and  Irving 
was  obliged  to  protect  himself.  He  took  the  material  to 
Mr.  John  Murray,  whose  liberality  with  authors  was  pro 
verbial  ;  but  Murray  civilly  declined  it,  and  Irving  under 
took  the  publication  at  his  own  risk.  To  this  he  was 
encouraged  by  Scott,  who  predicted  his  success.  The 


44  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

book  sold  in  England  as  it  sold  in  America.  It  is  an  old 
story,  and  it  used  to  be  told  with  national  pride,  how  Mr. 
Murray  was  very  speedily  glad  to  have  the  honor  and 
profit  of  publishing  the  books  of  the  American  author, 
and  perhaps  no  publisher's  note  of  declination  was  ever 
read  with  more  pleasure  than  Murray's  after  his  change 
of  attitude. 

Of  course  Mr.  Murray  made  a  mistake ;  he  did  not  cor 
rectly  foresee  what  the  public  would  like  and  buy.  But 
looking  at  the  material  offered  him  from  the  publish 
er's  point  of  view,  and  remembering  that  the  book  least 
likely  to  sell  is  a  series  of  sketches  by  an  author  of  no 
established  reputation  in  the  community  where  it  is  of 
fered,  his  rejection  does  not  seem  strange.  Nay,  looking 
at  the  book  now,  when  circumstances  have  altered,  I  am 
not  sure  but  a  publisher  would  come  to  the  same  con 
clusion. 

Irving  wrote  the  book  with  a  distinct  object.  The  two 
countries  had  not  recovered  from  the  irritation  of  the 
late  war.  The  comments  of  English  travellers  and  news 
papers  had  contributed  to  keep  alive  and  deepen  the 
alienation.  In  fact  the  Americans  had  been  so  estranged 
from  England  since  the  rupture  of  the  colonial  period, 
that  they  were  ignorant  of  the  country,  and  its  traditions 
had  lost  their  hold  on  them.  The  spirit  in  which  Ameri 
cans  regarded  England  was  misrepresented  and  misun 
derstood,  and  there  was  a  good  deal  of  bad  blood  that  was 
the  result  only  of  ignorance  and  prejudice.  Irving  set 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  45 

himself  to  remove  this,  so  far  as  his  own  countrymen  were 
concerned,  by  a  sympathetic  description  of  what  was  at 
tractive  in  Englishmen,  their  country,  ways,  and  customs ; 
and  perhaps  no  book  ever  so  revived  a  faded  and  roman 
tic  interest  in  an  old  home  as  did  the  "Sketch-Book." 
It  was  one  of  the  great  mollifying  and  civilizing  influ 
ences  of  the  age,  so  far  as  the  two  kindred  peoples  were 
concerned.  It  created  an  affectionate  interest  in  England, 
even  in  the  breasts  of  those  who  still  disliked  the  mingled 
hauteur  and  condescension  of  the  Islanders.  Naturally 
its  effect  was  not  so  marked  in  England,  but  it  was  ac 
cepted  as  a  graceful  overture  of  friendship,  and  the  au 
thor  himself  was  taken  to  the  English  heart.  His  plea  for 
good  neighborship  was  not  misunderstood  either  as  any 
concession  of  American  independence  or  any  currying  of 
favor.  One  of  the  earliest  papers,  that  On  English  Writ 
ers  on  America,  is  a  plain  telling  of  disagreeable  truths, 
without  apology ;  but  I  do  not  read  that  it  caused  any  ir 
ritation.  The  sympathetic  spirit  seen  in  the  author  en 
abled  John  Bull  to  accept  fair  criticism  without  offence. 
One  cannot  speak  too  warmly  of  the  charming  spirit  of 
this  book,  nor  of  its  delightful  style;  the  loveliness  of 
the  country,  the  venerable  places  of  pilgrimage,  the  tra 
ditions,  were  so  described  that  even  to-day  the  senti 
mental  pilgrim  can  find  no  better  expression  of  his  feel 
ing  than  in  these  descriptions ;  and  yet  the  book,  having 
accomplished  its  mission  in  its  generation,  is  nearly  a 
book  of  the  past,  and  as  we  turn  its  pleasant  pages  we 


46  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

wonder  a  little  at  tlie  sensation  they  once  made  in  all  the 
English  reading  world.  The  book  opened  to  the  author 
all  doors  of  literature  and  fashion  in  the  kingdom,  it  won 
him  the  friendship  of  the  men  and  women  most  conspicu 
ous  in  letters  and  politics  and  society.  When,  shortly 
after  it  was  published,  he  ran  over  to  Paris,  where  his  re 
putation  preceded  him,  word  came  that  the  "Sketch-Book" 
was  making  a  great  fame  for  him  in  England.  Jeffrey, 
in  the  Edinburgh  Revieiv,  paid  it  a  most  flattering  tribute, 
and  even  the  savage  Quarterly,  which  had  a  character  to 
sustain  for  railing  at  every  thing,  praised  it.  A  rumor 
attributed  it  to  Scott ;  at  least,  it  was  said,  he  must  have 
revised  it  and  given  to  it  its  exquisite  style.  "  Geoffrey 
Crayon  is  the  most  fashionable  fellow  of  the  day,"  wrote 
the  painter  Leslie.  Lord  Byron,  in  a  letter  to  Murray, 
underscored  his  admiration  of  the  author;  and  subse 
quently  said  to  an  American,  "His  Crayon — I  know  it 
by  heart,  at  least  there  is  not  a  passage  that  I  cannot  re 
fer  to  immediately ; "  and  afterwards  he  wrote  to  Moore, 
his  "  writings  are  my  delight."  There  seemed  to  be,  as 
one  wrote,  "  a  kind  of  conspiracy  to  hoist  him  over  the 
heads  of  his  contemporaries."  Perhaps  the  best  barome 
ter  of  his  popularity  was  the  mounting  enthusiasm  of  his 
publisher,  which  was  solidly  expressed.  And  this  cap 
ture  of  the  English  reading  world  was  made  at  the  mo 
ment  when  Scott  and  Byron  were  its  idols. 

Yet  I  am  not  quite  sure  but  we  would  look  upon  the 
"  Sketch-Book  "  as  a  tradition,  full  of  a  certain  tender  inter- 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  47 

est  yet,  and  not  quite  consigned  to  the  company  of  those 
"  Annuals  "  and  "  Keepsakes  "  of  the  period,  which  pre 
serve  to  us  in  their  binding  of  watered  silk  a  sweet  aroma 
of  good  society  and  literary  self-conscious  sentiment,  but 
for  two  papers,  the  Rip  Yan  Winkle  and  The  Legend 
of  Sleepy  Hollow.  "We  turn  the  leaves  of  the  other  essays 
uncertain  whether  the  slight  pleasure  we  experience  is 
not  a  recollection  of  a  pleasure  we  once  had  in  them ;  but 
with  these  two  it  is  quite  otherwise.  We  know  them  by 
heart,  but  they  have  the  charm  for  us  that  a  fairy  tale 
has  for  a  child  the  hundredth  time  it  is  told.  It  is  the 
indefinable  charm  of  the  genuine  folk-lore.  And  how 
simple  Eip  Yan  Winkle  is.  A  less  artist  would  have 
dressed  it  up  and  overloaded  it  with  a  thousand  fanciful 
elaborations,  such  as  the  imagination  of  each  of  us  likes 
to  supply.  How  true  it  seems,  and  how  old.  In  fact  it 
is  old.  And  yet  the  original  setting,  the  exquisite  adapta 
tion  of  the  legend  to  its  locality  make  it  a  new  creation. 
It  has  the  same  dignity  of  antiquity  as  the  Legend  of  the 
Seven  Sleepers  of  Ephesus,  or  of  the  Moslem  youths,  at 
tended  by  the  wise  dog  Ketmehr,  who  went  to  sleep  in  the 
cave  above  Damascus.  The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow 
has  hardly  the  same  quality,  but  it  is  nearly  as  sure  of 
immortality.  It  is,  like  the  other,  a  permanent  invention 
and  the  property  of  mankind,  and,  like  the  loom  of  Pe 
nelope,  has  passed  beyond  the  perils  of  a  literary  tenure. 
It  is  a  slightly  hard  and  cruel  story — it  is  almost  the 
only  instance  in  a  story  where  Irving  is  remorseless  to- 


48  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

wards  a  character ;  and  I  cannot  but  think  that  it  would 
be  vastly  better  if  the  author  had  displayed  a  little  touch 
of  pity  for  Ichabod  Crane,  had  endowed  him  with  some 
little  shade  of  pathos.  The  figure,  unfortunately,  must 
stand  as  it  is  cut  out,  in  all  its  angular  unloveliness,  with 
out  relief,  a  simple  compound  of  ugliness  and  greed,  and 
so  remorselessly  dealt  with  that  the  reader  almost  in 
stinctively  supplies  for  him  that  pity  which  the  author  de 
nied.  His  very  ungainliness  pleads  for  him  at  last,  and  we 
believe  that  even  a  Connecticut  schoolmaster  must  have 
had  some  of  the  feelings  of  a  man.  He  is  very  real,  as 
real  as  Don  Quixote  ;  and  what  a  contrast !  the  more  ridic 
ulous  the  Knight  of  La  Mancha  is,  the  more  we  love  him. 

These  two  short  tales,  inventions,  fancies — how  slight 
they  are !  not  perhaps  worth  the  serious  attention  of  the 
ponderous  critic,  who  makes  a  reputation  every  day,  and 
every  day  destroys  two,  and  would  make  one  for  himself 
if  he  had  leisure  to  spare  for  such  a  trifle — these  two 
little  airy  figments  out  of  the  fancy  of  an  idle  man,  I  am 
inclined  to  say,  have  as  much  power  of  living  on  in  the 
popular  mind  as  any  thing  done,  said,  or  written  in  this 
century.  And  the  amazing  thing  about  them  is  that  they 
are  "local,"  and  under  a  strong  suspicion  of  being  "pro 
vincial,"  having  sprung  out  of  a  virgin  soil  never  sown 
with  tradition  nor  watered  by  age  and  custom. 

"Bracebridge  Hall"  was  published  in  England  and 
America  in  May,  1822.  Before  its  appearance  Irving  had 
been  getting  the  better  of  his  malady,  and  found  himself 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  49 

involved  in  all  the  whirl  of  a  London  season.  The  new 
book  gave  great  satisfaction,  and  the  author  was  nearly 
killed  with  kindness.  To  say  that  he  was  the  fashion,  is 
fully  to  express  the  demands  upon  his  time  and  strength. 
He  was  sought  by  everybody.  His  writings  won  for  him 
the  entry  to  the  highest  social  circles  in  the  kingdom, 
where  he  was  welcome  as  a  friend  and  not  as  the  curi 
osity  of  a  day,  and  his  footing  was  equally  good  with  his 
brethren  of  the  quill.  To  mention  his  companions  would 
be  to  name  most  of  the  literary  lights  of  the  time,  and 
his  relations  with  many  of  them  were  those  of  the  most 
cordial  friendship.  "Bracebridge  Hall"  is  not  a  book  to 
make  a  man's  reputation,  but  it  is  one  to  extend  it  and 
increase  the  liking  for  him.  It  avoids  some  of  the  weak 
nesses  of  the  "  Sketch-Book,"  and  in  it  his  style  attains 
perhaps  the  perfection  of  ease  and  finish.  The  slight 
fiction  of  the  assembly  in  a  great  country  house  of  many 
wedding  guests  enables  the  author  to  depict  English 
character  and  customs,  and  to  give  his  readers  a  num 
ber  of  charming  stories.  One  of  these  is  a  characteristic 
Dutch  story  of  his  own  country,  Dolph  Heyliner.  But 
the  little  sketch  of  the  Stout  Gentleman,  a  mere  trifle  of 
restrained  humor  and  unsatisfied  curiosity,  exhibits  best 
the  author's  art  and  his  dainty  grace.  And  I  must  not 
omit  mention  of  the  Spectre  Ship  of  the  Hudson,  in 
which  we  have  in  a  few  pages  one  of  the  most  fascinat 
ing  of  all  the  Knickerbocker  legends. 
The  following  year  was  spent  in  travel  and  residence 


50  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

in  Germany,  a  year  made  unproductive  by  the  author's 
illness,  and  in  which  occurred  the  Dresden  episode  of 
which  I  have  spoken.  In  the  delightful  society  of  the 
Saxon  capital  at  that  time,  and  in  the  antiquated  little 
court  of  Frederick  Augustus  and  Queen  Amalia — good, 
prim,  simple  potentates,  such  as  Thackeray  liked  to 
create  for  the  entertainment  of  children — Irving  passed 
a  pleasant  winter,  and  if,  at  the  end  of  it,  he  tore  himself 
away  from  the  society  of  the  Fosters  with  a  heartache, 
and  went  back  to  Paris  with  a  feeling  of  being  again  cast 
upon  the  world,  he  was  not  long  idle.  With  the  Moores 
and  other  congenial  society  to  stimulate  him,  he  soon  set 
about  another  book,  and  "The  Tales  of  a  Traveller" 
appeared  in  London  in  August,  1824  In  the  opinion  of 
Irving,  with  which  the  best  critics  agreed,  Hallam  among 
them,  it  contained  some  of  his  best  writing.  Its  style  is 
criticised  as  over-refined  and  labored,  and  I  am  conscious 
now  and  then  of  a  wish  that  the  melody  were  broken 
occasionally  by  a  discord.  But  it  was  not  a  labored 
composition;  it  was  in  fact  written  rapidly,  tossed  off 
page  after  page  in  the  heat  of  a  composing  fury,  which 
surrounded  the  author  with  thickly  falling  manuscript. 
Up  to  this  time  Irving  could  never  harness  himself  to 
stated  hours  of  composition,  and  he  often  waited  months 
for  the  literary  impulse  in  a  kind  of  fever  of  teeming 
ideas  and  incapacity  of  expression.  But  when  he  once 
set  to  work  he  wrote  with  great  fluency,  and  produced  in 
a  short  time  an  incredible  amount  of  manuscript.  This 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  51 

book  has  for  me  a  delightful  spontaneity,  as  if  the  author 
enjoyed  the  production  of  every  story.  Its  variety  is 
surprising :  the  author  is  equally  at  home  with  the 
Italian  banditti,  Captain  Kidd,  and  the  poor-devil  au 
thors  of  London.  We  have  Moore's  authority  for  saying 
that  the  literary  dinner  described  in  the  second  part  has 
a  personal  foundation,  and  he  gives  the  names  of  the 
Longmans  as  ,the  publishers,  one  of  whom  was  the 
business  partner  who  let  nothing  distract  him  from  the 
carving,  while  the  other  was  the  laughing  partner  who 
attended  to  the  jokes.  It  is  a  whimsical  picture,  belong 
ing,  rather,  if  it  belongs  to  any  period,  to  the  age  of 
Addison  than  to  that  of  Scott.  In  his  story  of  Buck- 
thorne,  Irving  made  his  nearest  approach  to  a  novel. 
Whether  he  could  have  written  a  novel  of  the  first  class 
is  matter  of  conjecture,  that  he  could  have  made  an  en 
tertaining  long  story  is  evident;  he  had  the  power  of 
projecting  a  character,  he  had  the  essential  charm  of 
narration,  and  of  sprightly  dialogue,  unfailing  delicacy  of 
humor,  and  the  story-teller's  art  of  delay  in  exciting  in 
terest  (this  appears  even  in  his  historical  compositions) ; 
but  whether  he  had  the  robust  passion  needed  for  a  great 
fiction  may  be  doubted.  However  this  may  be,  "The 
Tales  of  a  Traveller  "  is  one  of  the  few  thoroughly  enter 
taining  collections  of  short  stories  in  the  language,  in 
which  the  art  of  turning  a  good  short  story  is  rare.  The 
reader  who  has  leisure  may  take  up  this  volume  sure  of 
enjoyment. 


52  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

But  the  volume  lacked  novelty  to  the  readers  of  its 
predecessors,  and  criticism  began  to  demand  a  new  role 
in  the  favorite.  It  was  this  expressed  dissatisfaction 
that  turned  Irving's  mind  to  graver  themes.  He  recurred 
to  a  previous  intention  of  writing  the  life  of  Washing 
ton,  and  he  composed  a  number  of  semi-political  es 
says,  which  were  never  published.  At  this  moment  of 
eagerness  to  do  something,  and  of  doubt,  a  project  was 
offered  which  kindled  all  his  imagination.  This  was  a 
Life  of  Columbus.  Mr.  Alexander  H.  Everett,  who  was 
minister  to  Spain,  proposed  to  him  a  translation  of  M. 
Navarrete's  "  Voyages  of  Columbus,"  which  was  just  ap 
pearing,  compiled  from  the  diary  of  Bishop  Las  Casas, 
the  journals  of  the  great  navigator,  and  other  historical 
documents.  Mr.  Irving  hastened  to  Madrid  in  February, 
1826.  He  there  found  that  the  publication  of  M.  Navar- 
rete  was  not  a  history,  but  rather  the  materials  for  one  ; 
that  the  libraries  of  the  capital  offered  him  a  mass  of  un 
used  matter,  and  he  changed  his  plan  and  began  at  once 
his  "History  of  Columbus."  At  this  he  labored  with 
great  zeal,  and  with  more  continuous  industry  than  he 
had  ever  before  given  to  any  work.  He  had  come  upon 
a  rich  mine.  His  studies  constantly  opened  new  themes 
for  his  pen,  and  his  fancy  kindled  with  projects  that 
would  last  him  a  lifetime.  A  part  of  his  suite  of  works 
illustrating  the  domination  of  the  Moors  in  Spain  was 
executed ;  but  the  Conquest  of  Mexico,  and  the  History 
of  the  Moors  and  Montezuma,  were  destined  never  to  be 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  53 

written.  He  was  constantly  turned  aside  from  the  Colum 
bus  to  compose  monographs  upon  some  exciting  episode, 
which  he  unearthed,  and  this,  with  his  anxiety  to  secure 
historical  accuracy,  delayed  the  publication  of  his  greater 
work  till  February,  1828.  It  was  shortly  followed  by  the 
"  Companions  of  Columbus,"  and  later  by  an  abridgment 
of  the  Columbus,  which  he  presented  to  Mr.  Murray,  his 
liberal  publisher ;  a  gift  which  was  the  source  of  great 
profit  to  the  latter. 

Irving's  residence  in  Spain  was  prolonged  till  Septem 
ber,  1829.  His  life  there  is  a  romance  in  itself.  He 
formed  both  with  the  Spaniards  and  with  resident  foreign 
ers  the  most  delightful  friendships,  and  he  entered  into 
the  romance  and  picturesqueness  of  land  and  people  with 
all  the  zest  of  an  ardent  and  susceptible  nature.  Spain 
has  never  given  her  hospitality  to  an  observer  in  such  full 
sympathy  with  her  past,  or  one  more  open  to  the  charms 
of  her  present.  It  needed  the  sun  of  Granada,  the  tra 
ditions  and  customs  of  a  gentle  and  spirited  race  linger 
ing  in  Andalusia,  the  aroma  of  the  musty  chronicles  of 
love  and  valor  in  the  old  libraries,  to  develop  the  oriental 
quality  of  his  imagination. 

It  was  the  most  fruitful  period  of  his  life,  and,  with  the 
exception  of  the  earliest,  of  the  most  consequence  to 
literature.  I  have  not  the  space  here  to  attempt  any 
analysis  of  the  poetic  "Alhambra,"  or  of  "The  Conquest 
of  Granada"  (which  in  his  old  age  the  author  thought  his 
best  work ) ;  nor  is  it  necessary.  The  Conquest  appeared 


54  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

under  the  guise  of  the  chronicle  of  a  friar  of  the  period, 
and  its  spirit  is  that  of  a  contemporary  record.  It  is  to 
a  large  extent  legendary,  but  authority  for  all  it  contains 
exists  in  the  musty  annals  of  Spain.  It  is  in  fact  a  com 
position  of  that  border-land  between  legend  and  history ; 
in  its  main  facts  it  rests  on  the  best  evidence,  its  color  is 
true  to  the  floating  splendor  of  an  age  when  drama  was 
acted  in  reality,  and  it  may  be  taken  as  a  sufficiently  true 
history  of  a  romantic  period.  Mr.  Prescott  says  of  it,  in 
the  introduction  to  his  "Ferdinand  and  Isabella:"  "  The 
reader  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  compare  his  chronicle 
with  the  present  more  prosaic  and  literal  narration,  will 
see  how  little  he  has  been  seduced  from  historic  accuracy 
by  the  poetical  aspect  of  his  subject."  The  "Alhambra" 
is  a  prose-poem,  to  which  the  world  is  indebted  for  a  great 
part  of  its  interest  in  the  most  luxurious  of  all  the  pal 
aces  of  the  Moorish  kings.  With  the  splendor  and  grace 
of  the  Saracenic  domination  Irving  was  thoroughly  fasci 
nated,  and  we  owe  to  him  the  opening  of  one  of  the  most 
charming  realms  of  which  our  imagination  is  free.  Per 
haps  the  value  of  such  a  realm  to  American  readers, 
engrossed  for  the  most  part  in  disenchanting  material 
struggles,  is  not  taken  sufficient  account  of. 

Irving  had  doubted  the  reception  of  his  first  grave  at 
tempt;  but  the  Columbus  had  an  immediate  and  con 
tinued  success.  It  procured  for  the  author  a  different,  if 
not  higher,  recognition  than  he  had  yet  received — the 
highest  degree  from  the  University  of  Oxford,  and  the 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  55 

royal  gold  medal  from  the  Society  of  Literature.  Time 
has  vindicated  the  substantial  accuracy  of  the  history. 
It  was  contrasted  at  the  time  with  Robertson's  more 
literal  account  of  Columbus,  and  one  wishes  that  some  of 
its  rhetorical  expressiveness  were  chastened,  and  that  it 
were  somewhat  condensed,  but  not  at  the  expense  of  the 
glow  of  enthusiastic  appreciation  which  is  proper  to  the 
narrative.  Irving  understood  the  value,  in  a  history,  of 
vivid  individual  portraiture,  and  he  was  by  his  sympathy 
enabled  to  conceive  the  character  of  Columbus  in  all  its 
grand  outlines.  He  presents  it  in  a  masterly  manner,  not 
anywhere  in  brilliant  and  glittering  "  word  painting,"  but 
as  an  expanding  conception  in  the  story,  which  at  last 
looms  up  in  the  mind  of  the  reader  in  gigantic  propor 
tions.  A  simple  hero,  a  magnificent  dreamer,  a  conse 
crated  life  ending  in  the  tragedy  which  is  inexorably  ap 
pointed  to  every  son  of  man  who  is  to  be  enshrined  in 
the  hearts  of  mankind. 

Towards  the  close  of  his  residence  in  Spain  the  author 
received  the  appointment  of  Secretary  of  Legation  to  the 
American  mission  in  London.  He  felt  a  reluctance  to 
undertake  the  routine  of  the  office,  and  he  had  a  longing 
to  return  home.  But  when  he  had  been  prevailed  on  to 
accept  it,  and  was  once  more  launched  upon  the  exciting 
London  society,  he  found  the  situation  agreeable.  Dur 
ing  this  stay  in  England  he  received  all  the  honors  that 
society  could  give  him,  he  renewed  his  old  friendships, 
and  visited  places  of  note;  one  of  these  was  Newstead 


56  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

Abbey,  where  lie  was  for  some  time  a  guest,  and  to  which 
his  pen  gave  for  American  readers  that  romantic  interest 
which  almost  always  attaches  to  whatever  he  describes. 

His  diplomatic  position  was  resigned  in  September, 
1831,  but  it  was  not  till  May,  1832,  that  the  author  saw 
again  the  land  which  had  been  so  long  pulling  at  his 
heart-strings.  Mingled  with  his  love  of  home  had  grown 
some  doubts  of  the  feelings  of  his  countrymen  for  him. 
These  were  dissipated  by  the  spontaneous  outburst  of 
affection  that  greeted  him  in  America.  The  whole  coun 
try  was  proud  of  him,  and  felt  how  much  it  had  been  hon 
ored  in  his  person.  New  York  gave  him  the  most  bril 
liant  dinner  she  had  ever  given;  other  cities  solicited 
the  honor  of  entertaining  him — marks  of  good- will  which 
the  diffidence  of  the  author  compelled  him  to  decline. 
He  was  entirely  wanting  in  the  dinner-table  heroism. 

Irving  was  now  past  middle  life,  having  returned  in  his 
fiftieth  year,  yet  neither  his  long  residence  abroad,  nor  his 
extensive  commerce  with  society,  nor  his  age,  made  him 
in  the  least  Hose.  On  the  contrary,  his  enthusiasm  is  de 
lightful  to  see.  He  marvelled  at  the  progress  made  in  sev 
enteen  years,  the  expansion  of  the  country,  the  accumu 
lation  of  wealth,  the  evidences  of  refinement,  the  growth 
of  literature.  His  pride  in  what  he  saw  was  equal  to  his 
curiosity.  He  at  once  undertook  a  comprehensive  tour 
through  the  South  and  West,  and  into  the  then  almost 
unexplored  Southwest,  on  the  Arkansas  river.  The  im 
mediate  result  of  this  excursion  beyond  civilization  was 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  57 

"  A  Tour  on  the  Prairies,"  in  which  he  gives  a  color  to  a 
rather  prosaic  adventure,  simply  by  his  charm  of  narra 
tion.  It  remains  to-day  as  pleasing  an  account  of  a  West 
ern  hunting  expedition  as  we  have.  "What  is  noteworthy 
in  it,  however,  is  that  Irving's  mind  was  able  to  kindle  to 
this  phase  of  life  as  readily  as  to  the  romance  of  Spain. 
Out  of  this  taste  of  frontier  life  grew  other  readable 
books,  "Astoria"  and  "Captain  Bonneville,"  pieces  of 
book-making,  in  the  first  of  which  he  was  assisted  by 
his  nephew  Pierre. 

Not  only  was  his  enthusiasm  fresh,  but  the  flow  of  lit 
erary  productiveness  was  in  full  tide  ;  if  experience  had 
chastened  his  humor,  it  had  not  abated  the  freedom  of 
his  fancy  nor  chilled  his  ardor.  Some  of  his  best  work 
was  yet  to  be  done.  Some  of  his  happiest  years  were  be 
fore  him.  He  was  not  only  eager  to  cast  in  his  lot  with 
the  vigorous  life  about  him,  but  he  desired  a  home,  a 
permanent  anchorage  in  his  beloved  land.  The  site  he 
fixed  upon  was  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Hudson,  near 
Tarrytown,  and  within  an  easy  walk  of  Sleepy  Hollow. 
He  purchased  a  few  acres  of  ground  on  the  bank  of  the 
river,  having  an  old  Dutch  stone  cottage,  which  had  be 
longed  to  the  Van  Tassels,  which  he  transformed,  with 
out  destroying  its  character,  into  Sunnyside.  The  place 
was  small,  but  it  evidently  swallowed  up  a  good  deal  of 
money.  Its  situation  is  lovely.  And  when  the  author 
had  added  to  the  house  a  tower,  which  in  a  few  years 
was  draped  in  ivy,  the  root  of  which  was  transplanted 


58  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

from  Melrose  Abbey,  and  upon  the  top  of  the  tower  turned 
and  creaked  a  venerable  Dutch  weathercock  from  Kotter- 
dam ;  when  he  had  planted  trees  and  shrubs,  built  conser 
vatories  and  stables,  and  laid  out  secluded  walks,  he  had 
as  pretty  a  retreat  as  even  his  fastidious  taste  could  desire. 
But  it  was  not  for  himself  alone  that  he  built  and 
adorned  it ;  nor  was  it  for  his  own  comfort  or  for  the  sake 
of  gain  that  he  kept  on  toiling  with  his  pen.  He  was 
able  at  last  to  gratify  his  longing  for  domestic  life,  and 
to  offer  a  home  to  his  surviving  brothers  and  his  nieces. 
His  life  at  Sunnyside,  surrounded  by  his  nieces,  who 
were  devoted  to  him,  and  would  have  spoiled  a  more  self 
ish  man,  is  a  picture  that  the  mind  likes  to  linger  on.  It 
is  a  realization  of  what  one  would  have  wished  for  a  man 
who  had  added  so  much  to  the  enjoyment  of  his  genera 
tion.  But  the  limits  of  this  essay  do  not  permit  me  to 
dwell  upon  it,  nor  in  much  detail  upon  his  remaining  lit 
erary  achievements.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  a  satisfactory 
estimate  of  the  man  and  his  works.  "With  the  exception 
of  his  absence  at  Madrid  as  minister,  he  resided  the  re 
mainder  of  his  life  at  Sunnyside,  which  became  a  sort  of 
place  of  pilgrimage  for  travelling  celebrities,  young  au 
thors,  and  troops  of  friends.  The  consideration  in  which 
Irving  was  held  appears  by  the  attitude  towards  him  of 
the  chief  authors  of  his  generation,  and  his  sympathy 
with  every  rising  talent,  and  his  quickness  to  recognize 
it,  made  him  beloved  by  everybody.  Never  was  an  au 
thor  freer  from  vanity  and  jealousy. 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  59 

A  considerable  portion  of  the  ten  years  after  his  re 
turn  was  given  to  travel  and  social  life,  to  building,  and 
to  putting  his  savings  into  productive  form  (though  some 
of  them  went  into  Western  speculations  that  illustrated 
the  facility  rather  than  the  security  of  investments  at  that 
period) ;  but  he  was  engaged  in  a  variety  of  literary  pro 
jects  as  well.  For  a  time  he  undertook  regular  contri 
butions  to  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine,  which  was  not  a 
lucrative  amusement.  The  books  of  this  period  are  "  A 
Tour  on  the  Prairies,"  "  Recollections  of  Abbotsford  and 
Newstead  Abbey,"  "The  Legends  of  the  Conquest  of 
Spain,"  "  Astoria,"  "  Captain  Bonneville,"  and  a  number 
of  graceful  papers  finally  collected  under  the  title  of 
"Wolfert's  Boost." 

One  incident  of  this  period  should  not  be  passed  in 
silence :  that  was  the  abandonment  of  his  life-long  pro 
ject  of  writing  the  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico  to 
Mr.  William  H.  Prescott.  It  had  been  a  scheme  of  his 
boyhood ;  he  had  made  collections  of  materials  for  it 
during  his  first  residence  in  Spain ;  and  he  was  actually 
and  absorbedly  engaged  in  the  composition  of  the  first 
chapters,  when  he  was  sounded  by  Mr.  Cogswell,  of  the 
Astor  Library,  in  behalf  of  Mr.  Prescott.  Some  conver 
sation  showed  that  Mr.  Prescott  was  contemplating  the 
subject  upon  which  Mr.  Irving  was  engaged,  and  the  lat 
ter  instantly  authorized  Mr.  Cogswell  to  say  that  he 
abandoned  it.  Although  our  author  was  somewhat  far 
advanced,  and  Mr.  Prescott  had  not  yet  collected  his  ma- 


60  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

terials,  Irving  renounced  the  glorious  theme  in  such  a 
manner  that  Prescott  never  suspected  the  pain  and  loss 
it  cost  him,-  nor  the  full  extent  of  his  own  obligation. 
Some  years  afterwards  Irving  wrote  to  his  nephew  that 
in  giving  it  up  he  in  a  manner  gave  up  his  bread,  as  he 
had  no  other  subject  to  supply  its  place.  "  I  was,"  he 
wrote,  "  dismounted  from  my  clieval  de  bataille,  and  have 
never  been  completely  mounted  since."  But  he  added 
that  he  was  not  sorry  for  the  warm  impulse  that  induced 
him  to  abandon  the  subject,  and  that  Mr.  Prescott's 
treatment  of  it  had  justified  his  opinion  of  him.  Not 
withstanding  Prescott's  very  brilliant  work,  we  cannot 
but  feel  some  regret  that  Irving  did  not  write  a  Conquest 
of  Mexico.  His  method,  as  he  outlined  it,  would  have 
been  the  natural  one.  Instead  of  partially  satisfying  the 
reader's  curiosity  in  a  preliminary  essay  in  which  the 
Aztec  civilization  was  exposed,  Irving  would  have  begun 
with  the  entry  of  the  conquerors,  and  carried  his  reader 
step  by  step  onward,  letting  him  share  all  the  excitement 
and  surprise  of  discovery  which  the  invaders  experi 
enced,  and  learn  of  the  wonders  of  the  country  in  the 
manner  most  likely  to  impress  both  the  imagination  and 
the  memory ;  and  with  his  artistic  sense  of  the  value  of 
the  picturesque  he  would  have  brought  into  strong  relief 
the  dramatis  personce  of  the  story. 

High  as  Irving' s  position  was  as  a  man  of  letters,  the 
consideration  in  which  he  was  held  was  much  broader 
than  that — it  was  that  of  one  of  the  first  citizens  of  the 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  61 

republic.  His  friends,  readers,  and  admirers  were  not 
merely  the  literary  class,  but  people  of  affairs,  business, 
society,  and  politics,  and  among  these  friends  were  the 
prominent  statesmen  of  both  parties.  Almost  any  career 
was  open  to  him  if  he  had  lent  an  ear  to  their  solicita 
tions.  But  political  life  was  not  to  his  taste,  and  it  would 
have  been  fatal  to  his  sensitive  spirit.  It  did  not  require 
much  self-denial,  perhaps,  to  decline  the  candidacy  for 
mayor  of  New  York,  nor  the  honor  of  running  for  Con 
gress  ;  but  he  put  aside  also  the  distinction  of  a  seat  in 
Van  Buren's  Cabinet  as  Secretary  of  the  Navy.  His  ac 
ceptance  of  the  mission  to  Spain,  an  appointment  which 
plunged  him  into  profound  astonishment,  was  doubtless 
influenced  by  the  intended  honor  to  his  profession,  the 
gratifying  manner  in  which  it  came  to  him,  his  desire  to 
please  his  friends,  and  the  belief,  which  was  a  delusion, 
that  diplomatic  life  in  Madrid  would  offer  no  serious  in 
terruption  to  his  "Life  of  "Washington,"  in  which  he  had 
just  become  engaged.  The  nomination — the  suggestion  of 
Daniel  Webster,  Tyler's  Secretary  of  State — was  cordially 
approved  by  the  President  and  Cabinet,  and  confirmed 
almost  by  acclamation  in  the  Senate.  "Ah,"  said  Mr. 
Clay,  who  was  opposing  nearly  all  the  President's  ap 
pointments,  "  this  is  a  nomination  everybody  will  concur 
in!"  "If  a  person  of  more  merit  and  higher  qualifica 
tion,"  wrote  Mr.  Webster  in  his  official  notification,  "  had 
presented  himself,  great  as  is  my  personal  regard  for  you, 
I  should  have  yielded  it  to  higher  considerations."  No 


62  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

other  appointment  could  have  been  made  so  complimen 
tary  to  Spain,  and  it  remains  to  this  day  one  of  the  most 
honorable  to  his  own  country. 

Irving  was  in  his  sixtieth  year  when  he  went  to  Madrid, 
and  he  remained  away  four  years.  He  was  not  by  any 
means  insensible  to  the  honor  of  the  appointment,  he 
thought  it  rather  the  crowning  honor  of  his  life ;  but  he 
went  with  great  reluctance,  and  there  seems  to  have  been 
not  a  day  of  his  absence  that  he  did  not  long  for  Sunny- 
side.  Nor  was  he  indifferent  to  the  recognition  of  his 
fame  which  met  him  in  Europe  ;  but  Sunnyside  was  every 
day  weighed  against  the  world,  and  the  world  kicked  the 
beam.  His  diplomatic  rank  gave  him  access  to  the  courts 
of  England,  France,  and  Spain,  where  he  was  received  as 
one  well  known,  with  many  marks  of  attention  paid  to 
the  author  rather  than  the  minister.  But  the  shows 
and  spectacles  had  lost  their  novelty,  the  illusions  of 
society  were  dispelled — he  had  run  the  round  of  it  for  al 
most  half  a  century — and  he  in  vain  sought  to  revive  the 
spell  that  Europe  once  had  for  him.  He  had  no  more 
curiosity  for  great  sights  or  great  people,  and  he  escaped 
when  possible  from  the  fine  ladies  and  the  attentions  of 
the  drawing-rooms.  And  we,  looking  through  his  eyes 
and  his  letters  of  this  time,  also  see  Europe  faded,  and 
worn,  and  empty  in  comparison  with  that  little  nest  on 
the  Hudson.  In  all  this  there  was  not  a  shade  of  cyni 
cism — just  a  philosophical  acceptance  of  the  situation. 

In  Spain  it  was  impossible  but  some  romantic  warmth 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  ($ 

should  be  rekindled,  and  it  is  quite  easy,  as  we  journey 
about  with  him,  to  renew  much  of  the  enthusiasm  of 
other  days.  Spain  was  as  beautiful  to  him  as  ever,  and 
he  lost  no  interest  in  its  people ;  but  there  were  absences 
and  changes  that  saddened  him,  and  he  found  the  revival 
of  old  associations  but  a  sad  pleasure.  He  could  not 
have  come  to  Spain  in  a  more  critical  and  interesting 
state  of  affairs,  or  one  requiring  more  diplomatic  caution 
and  common  sense.  Isabella  II.  was  queen,  but  a  girl  of 
twelve,  and  in  her  legal  minority.  The  soldier  Espartero 
was  acting  regent.  Her  mother  had  run  off  to  Paris  with 
her  savings  and  her  lover ;  and  this  child-queen,  with  her 
little  sister,  was  left,  without  other  relatives,  in  the  hands 
of  statesmen,  politicians,  and  priests — merely  a  queen 
and  a  pawn  on  the  chess-board.  The  little  queen  excited 
Irving's  sympathy,  and  he  soon  came  to  take  a  deep  in 
terest  in  the  drama  going  on  about  him.  For  four  years 
he  lived  amid  the  revolutionary  alarms,  the  plottings,  the 
fightings,  sieges  and  the  escapades,  the  changes  of  minis 
try,  and  the  endless  complications  of  that  disturbed  time. 
He  discharged  his  official  duties  with  admirable  tact,  pru 
dence,  and  a  real  diplomatic  address.  A  minister  of  less 
personal  reputation,  and  unknown  in  Madrid,  would  have 
experienced  more  difficulties.  His  conduct  pleased  both 
governments.  I  do  not  dwell  upon  this  period,  for  al 
though  it  is  a  most  interesting  episode  in  Irving's  life,  it 
has  little  relation  to  his  literary  career.  The  "Life  of 
Washington"  made  very  little  progress. 


64  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

It  is  evidence  of  the  weight  that  living's  name  car 
ried  as  a  citizen  at  this  time,  aside  from  his  consideration 
in  literature,  that  he  was  called  from  Madrid  to  London 
for  consultation  on  the  Oregon  boundary  difficulty  in 
1845,  and  that  his  efforts  contributed  to  the  settlement. 
Irving  was  strongly  excited  on  the  subject,  and  deplored 
the  course  of  the  British  press  in  stirring  up  rancorous 
prejudice  and  bitterness  between  the  two  nations.  "  Bul- 
wer,"  he  once  exclaimed  to  the  English  Minister  at  Ma 
drid,  "  I  should  deplore  exceedingly  a  war  with  England, 
for,  depend  upon  it,  if  we  must  come  to  blows  it  will  be 
serious  work  for  both.  You  might  break  our  head  at 
first,  but,  by  Heaven !  we  would  break  your  back  in  the 
end." 

Irving's  joy  in  returning  to  Sunnyside  was  like  that  of  a 
boy  home  from  school  on  a  vacation.  But  it  was  not  to  a 
life  of  idleness  that  he  retired.  His  leisure  had  been 
all  spent  in  his  youth,  the  time  of  loitering  and  dreaming 
with  him  was  in  the  days  usually  given  to  the  keenest 
competition  of  life.  And  he  was  fortunate  in  this  that 
his  old  age  was  a  busy  one,  that  he  was  impelled  by  the 
irresistible  literary  rage  to  the  very  last.  He  had  indeed 
much  to  do.  The  "Life  of  Washington,"  a  task  that  had 
been  laid  upon  his  mind  in  early  years,  must  be  finished 
before  his  departure.  But  other  duties  close  at  hand 
constantly  postponed  it. 

His  attention  was  first  occupied  by  an  addition  to  the 
house  at  Sunnyside,  and  then  by  putting  his  books  in  a 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  65 

productive  train.  I  am  told  that  for  several  years,  and 
when  the  author  was  at  the  height  of  his  popularity, 
his  works  were  virtually  out  of  print.  From  1842  to  1848 
none  were  to  be  bought  except  stray  copies  of  a  cheap 
Philadelphia  edition,  and  perhaps  some  of  the  Paris  re 
print,  in  the  "  collection  of  ancient  and  modern  British 
authors,"  of  1840.  The  Philadelphia  publishers  did  not 
think  the  market  warranted  a  new  edition.  But  Mr.  Ir 
ving  and  his  friends  judged  it  more  wisely.  Mr.  George 
P.  Putnam,  then  a  young  publisher  of  New  York,  offered 
to  assume  the  responsibility,  and  Mr.  Irving  made  an 
arrangement  with  him  which  was  satisfactory  to  both. 
The  result  vindicated  the  author's  confidence,  and  the 
publisher's  enterprise  and  sagacity  :  from  July,  1848,  to 
November,  1859,  Irving  received  on  his  copyrights  over 
eighty-eight  thousand  dollars.  If  the  relations* existing 
between  this  author  and  publisher  were  universal,  we 
should  think  the  literary  millennium  close  at  hand.  When 
business  disaster  overtook  the  publisher,  Irving  stood  by 
him  like  a  brother,  and  in  the  end  he  reaped  the  benefit 
of  his  trust  and  kindness. 

While  the  revision  of  his  works  was  going  on,  the 
Washington  made  some  progress,  but  it  was  occasion 
ally  put  aside  for  some  tempting  literary  excursion.  Two 
of  these  "  asides "  were  the  "  Biography  of  Goldsmith " 
and  the  "Life  of  Mahomet."  The  Goldsmith  was  en 
larged  from  a  sketch  made  twenty-five  years  before,  and 
was  rapidly  thrown  off.  It  is  a  sympathetic  piece  of 


66  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

work,  which  deserves  the  popularity  it  attained  and  holds. 
Without  being  at  all  a  deep  study  of  character,  it  is,  I 
think,  as  true  a  representation  of  the  simple-minded 
scholar,  the  vain  and  lovable  author,  as  ever  has  been 
given.  The  Mahomet  has  the  charm  of  Irving's  style, 
and  is  pervaded  by  his  equity  of  judgment ;  but  it  is  a 
little  pale  beside  Gibbon's  masterly  and  virile  picture  of 
the  Arabian  prophet. 

There  is  a  certain  sad  pleasure  in  reading  the  memoirs 
of  Irving's  last  years,  enlivened  as  they  were  by  congen 
ial  work,  cheered  by  the  affectionate  glow  of  a  charming 
home  and  the  loving  assiduities  of  friends  and  relatives, 
and  glorified  by  a  fame  honorably  won.  The  sadness  is 
in  the  inevitable  withdrawal  of  comrade  after  com 
rade,  and  the  slow  setting  of  the  sun.  Yet  the  author 
preserved  to  the  end  his  playful  humor,  his  freshness  of 
feeling,  his  enjoyment  of  life,  his  sweet  temper  towards 
the  world,  his  delight  in  beauty.  To  the  last  he  basked 
in  the  sun,  and  radiated  cheerfulness  to  all  around  him. 
I  like  to  read  of  him,  enjoying  what  he  calls  a  "  social 
outbreak,  after  a  long  course  of  quiet  life,"  at  Sara 
toga,  surrounded  by  old  friends  and  new  acquaintances. 
"There  are  some  very  agreeable  talking  ladies  here," 
writes  this  charming  old  gentleman,  in  his  seventieth 
year,  to  his  niece,  "  and  a  great  number  of  very  pretty- 
looking  ones  ;  two  or  three  with  dark  Spanish  eyes,  that 
I  sit  and  talk  to,  and  look  under  their  dark  eyelashes, 
and  think  of  dear  old  Spain." 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  ffl 

The  final  volume  of  the  "Life  of  Washington"  was  not 
issued  from  the  press  till  a  few  months  before  his  death, 
but  long  enough  before  for  him  to  receive  from  the  best 
students  of  the  Revolutionary  period  the  warmest  testi 
mony  to  its  high  merit.  It  is  possible  that  if  it  had 
been  composed  in  earlier  years  it  would  have  been  a 
more  brilliant  performance,  and  in  reading  it  I  can  see 
that  its  placid  and  moderate  tone  may  mislead  as  to  its 
real  strength.  "We  miss  from  it  certain  personal  details 
and  the  fuller  information  which  memoirs  and  diaries 
then  unpublished  would  enable  the  author  to  add  now. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  Irving  carried  his  literary 
moderation  down  into  an  age  that  demands  the  vivid, 
the  startling,  and  the  unexpected.  It  is  impossible 
for  any  biography  to  be  less  pretentious  in  style,  or 
less  ambitious  in  proclamation.  The  only  pretension 
of  matter  is  in  the  early  chapters,  in  which  a  more 
than  doubtful  genealogy  is  elaborated,  and  in  which  it  is 
thought  necessary  to  Washington's  dignity  to  give  a  ficti 
tious  importance  to  his  family  and  his  childhood,  and  to 
accept  the  Southern  estimate  of  the  hut  in  which  he  was 
born  as  a  "mansion."  In  much  of  this  false  estimate, 
Irving  was  doubtless  misled  by  the  fables  of  Weems. 
But  while  he  has  given  us  a  dignified  portrait  of  Wash 
ington,  it  is  as  far  as  possible  removed  from  that  of  the 
smileless  prig  which  has  begun  to  weary  even  the  popu 
lar  fancy.  The  man  he  paints  is  flesh  and  blood,  pre 
sented,  I  believe,  with  substantial  faithfulness  to  his 


68  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

character ;  with  a  recognition  of  the  defects  of  his  educa 
tion  and  the  deliberation  of  his  mental  operations ;  with 
at  least  a  hint  of  that  want  of  breadth  of  culture  and 
knowledge  of  the  past,  the  possession  of  which  charac 
terized  many  of  his  great  associates ;  and  with  no  con 
cealment  that  he  had  a  dower  of  passions  and  a  temper 
which  only  vigorous  self- watchfulness  kept  under.  But 
he  portrays  with  an  admiration  not  too  highly  colored 
the  magnificent  patience,  the  courage  to  bear  miscon 
struction,  the  unfailing  patriotism,  the  practical  sagacity, 
the  level  balance  of  judgment,  combined  with  the  wisest 
toleration,  the  dignity  of  mind,  and  the  lofty  moral  na 
ture  which  made  him  the  great  man  of  his  epoch.  Ir- 
ving's  grasp  of  this  character ;  his  lucid  marshalling  of 
the  scattered,  often  wearisome  and  uninteresting  details 
of  our  dragging,  unpicturesque  Revolutionary  "War ;  his 
just  judgment  of  men ;  his  even,  almost  judicial  modera 
tion  of  tone  ;  and  his  admirable  proportion  of  space  to 
events,  render  the  discussion  of  style  in  reference  to  this 
work  superfluous. 

"Washington's  character  is  presented  as  a  conception 
pervading  the  whole  book,  and  is  not  projected  on  any 
one  page  in  a  blaze  of  adjectives,  and  under  an  illumina 
tion  of  colored  lights.  The  method  followed  is  that  in 
the  "Life  of  Columbus,"  which  gives  to  the  reader  a  truer 
conception  of  character  than  any  amount  of  antithetical 
parade  of  qualities.  It  is  to  be  noted  also  that  the  au 
thor's  judgment  of  men  and  events  has  been  little  dis- 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  QQ 

turbed  by  subsequent  research.  There  has  been  noth 
ing  added  of  value  to  his  judicial  portraits  of  Arnold,  of 
Andre,  of  Gates,  of  Lee.  That  the  book  raised  few  con 
troversies  may  be  regarded  by  some  as  evidence  of  its 
unimportance ;  it  seems  to  me  that  time  is  deciding 
otherwise.  There  is  no  railing  at  the  Provincial  Con 
gress,  yet  we  are  left  in  no  doubt  as  to  the  embarrass 
ments  its  action  caused  Washington.  There  is  no  scold 
ing  about  the  militia,  nor  much  about  the  contractors, 
but  we  are  made  aware  of  the  difficulties  that  beset  the 
unselfish  patriots  of  the  time ;  and  what  is  always  delight 
ful  in  the  biography  is  the  tone  of  calm  patriotism,  the 
author's  broad  love  of  his  native  land  disfigured  by  no 
vulgar  partisanship. 

With  this  book  Irving's  work  was  finished ;  and  in 
November,  1859,  he  took  his  departure  from  a  world 
with  which  he  was  at  peace,  to  go  to  another  existence 
in  which  his  faith  had  rested  undisturbed. 

I  hope  that  this  sketch,  imperfect  as  it  is,  has  given  the 
reader  a  point  of  view  for  an  impartial  estimate  of  Ir 
ving's  literary  rank  and  career.  The  writer  is  warned  of 
the  futility  of  attempting  to  assign  to  any  man  of  letters 
his  future  standing,  a  matter  which  experience  shows  is 
determined  by  rules  that  the  critics  have  not  yet  discov 
ered.  I  can  only  express  the  belief  that  Irving's  position 
will  be  somewhat  higher  than  the  present  critical  esti 
mate  of  him,  and  for  this  I  will  give  a  reason  or  two. 

Irving's  achievements  in  pure  creation  will  be  more  dis- 


70  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

tinctly  recognized  when  some  of  his  own  work  and  much 
of  contemporary  writing  falls  away.  The  romantic  inves 
titure  of  the  Hudson  and  the  Knickerbocker  legend  are 
simply  indestructible.  The  author's  service  to  American 
letters  was  of  a  peculiar  kind  that  cannot  be  repeated. 

He  was  our  first  literary  man.  I  use  the  term  in  a 
narrow  and  technical  sense.  He  was  one  of  the  very  few 
in  America  who  have  regarded  life — not  from  any  prac 
tical,  reformatory,  political,  or  theologic,  but  from  a 
literary  point  of  view.  The  value  of  this  point  of  view  to 
the  world  can  be  maintained  ;  it  endures  when  the  others 
pass  away.  A  man  with  Irving's  gifts  is  doing  man 
kind  more  permanent  service  as  an  observer,  a  spectator 
even,  than  he  could  do  by  active  participation  in  the 
affairs  of  the  moment. 

The  measure  of  such  a  genius  is  not  altogether  that  of 
what  we  call  intellectual  force.  In  regarding  Irving's 
career  and  in  reading  his  works,  he  does  not  impress  me 
as  a  person  of  the  highest  intellectual  force,  and  proba 
bly  he  did  not  so  impress  his  contemporaries.  There  is 
nothing  aggressive  in  his  personality.  We  could  name 
a  score  of  men  of  this  age,  some  of  them  now  living,  to 
whom  we  should  not  compare  Irving  in  point  of  intel 
lectual  vigor.  He  had  little  aggressiveness ;  he  had 
a  certain  equable  breadth  of  conception  and  clearness, 
without  close  analytic  or  critical  power;  internal  calm 
was  the  necessary  condition  of  his  production,  criticism 
chilled  him,  and  the  sunshine  of  approval  was  necessary 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.  71 

to  his  literary  work.  This  argues  a  want  of  virility ;  but 
when  we  consider  his  achievements,  and  the  unique  posi 
tion  he  held  in  England  and  America  for  almost  half  a 
century,  we  begin  to  think  that  some  element  of  genius 
has  been  left  out  of  our  calculation. 

No  writer  of  his  time  had  a  better  sense  of  literary 
form  and  proportion ;  he  seems  to  have  been  born  with 
this  as  with  his  style,  for  I  find  no  discipline  in  his  de 
sultory  and  imperfect  education  to  account  for  either. 
His  style,  which  is  not  an  imitation  of  any,  but  yet  has 
its  affinities  with  that  in  vogue  two  generations  ago,  and 
not  with  our  style  (if  we  have  any),  is  in  some  of  his 
books  somewhat  too  highly  polished  and  annoy ingly 
melodious ;  but  it  is  natural  to  the  man.  It  does  not 
weary,  and  it  combines  as  many  of  the  qualities  that 
make  what  we  call  "  charm  "  in  lighter  literature  as  any 
in  our  tongue. 

Irving' s  books  are  quite  free  from  the  unrest  of  these 
times,  and  there  is  a  total  absence  in  them  of  the  in 
tellectual  strain  which  characterizes  nearly  all  the  writ 
ing  of  the  past  thirty  years.  He  was  in  many  respects 
a  man  of  another  age ;  his  writings  lead  to  reflective  en 
joyment,  and  have  little  in  them  stimulating.  His  be 
lief  in  the  supernatural  was  never  disturbed,  his  faith 
in  God  was  simple,  his  love  of  humanity  was  clouded  by 
no  pessimistic  doubts.  The  dawning  realism  perhaps  he 
did  not  at  all  apprehend.  It  must  be  confessed  that  he 
was  an  idealist,  and  it  is  fortunate  that  he  was,  for  I  do 


72  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

not  believe  that  the  world  has  yet  done  with  the  litera 
ture  which  bears  that  stamp. 

Irving  has  been  reproached  with  being  an  "English" 
writer.  The  truth  is  that  he  was,  in  his  pure  literary 
capacity,  cosmopolitan.  Nothing  can  be  more  purely 
American  than  his  treatment  of  American  subjects,  and  if 
in  Italy,  in  England,  in  Spain,  he  caught  the  local  color 
and  tone,  he  was  only  doing  what  literary  art  demands. 
But  in  all  that  he  wrote,  under  all  surface  color  and 
local  infusion,  there  is  always  discernible  the  one  uni 
form  quality,  the  unmistakable  individual  style  of  Irving. 

I  should  be  untrue  to  my  own  conception  of  one  of 
the  most  potent  forces  in  Irving's  literature,  if  I  did  not 
speak  of  his  moral  quality ;  and  I  may  be  permitted  to 
repeat  what  I  have  said  elsewhere.  There  is  something 
that  made  Scott  and  Irving  personally  loved  by  the  mill 
ions  of  their  readers  who  had  only  the  dimmest  ideas  of 
their  personality.  This  was  some  quality  perceived  in 
what  they  wrote.  Each  one  can  define  it  for  himself ; 
there  it  is,  and  I  do  not  see  why  it  is  not  as  integral  a 
part  of  the  authors — an  element  in  the  estimate  of  their 
future  position — as  what  we  term  their  intellect,  their 
knowledge,  their  skill,  or  their  art.  However  you  rate  it, 
you  cannot  account  for  Irving's  influence  in  the  world 
without  it.  In  his  tender  tribute  to  Irving,  the  great 
hearted  Thackeray,  who  saw  as  clearly  as  anybody  the 
place  of  mere  literary  art  in  the  sum  total  of  life,  quoted 
the  dying  words  of  Scott  to  Lockhart,  "Be  a  good  man, 


CHARLES  DUDLEY   WARNER.  73 

my  dear."  "We  know  well  enough  that  the  great  author 
of  The  Newcomes  and  the  great  author  of  The  Heart  of 
Midlothian  recognized  the  abiding  value  in  literature  of 
integrity,  sincerity,  purity,  charity,  faith.  These  are 
beneficences;  and  Irving's  literature,  walk  round  it  and 
measure  it  by  whatever  critical  instruments  you  will,  is  a 
beneficent  literature.  The  author  loved  good  women  and 
little  children  and  a  pure  life ;  he  had  faith  in  his  fellow- 
men,  a  kindly  sympathy  with  the  lowest,  without  any 
subservience  to  the  highest ;  he  retained  a  belief  in  the 
possibility  of  chivalrous  actions,  and  did  not  care  to  en 
velop  them  in  a  cynical  suspicion  ;  he  was  an  author  still 
capable  of  an  enthusiasm.  His  books  are  wholesome, 
full  of  sweetness  and  charm,  of  humor  without  any  sting, 
of  amusement  without  any  stain;  and  their  more  solid 
qualities  are  marred  by  neither  pedantry  nor  pretension. 


LIFE,  CHARACTER,  AND  GENIUS 


OF 


WASHINGTON  IRVING. 


BY  WILLIAM  CULLEN  BBYANT. 


A   DISCOUESE 

ON  THE  LIFE,  CHARACTER,  AND   GENIUS    OF  WASHINGTON   IRVING,  DELIVERED 

BEFORE   THE   NEW  YORK  HISTORICAL   SOCIETY,    AT  THE  ACADEMY 

OF  MUSIC,    IN  NEW  YORK,    ON  THE  3D  OF  APRIL,    1860, 

BY  WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


E  have  come  together,  my  friends,  on  the  birth 
day  of  an  illustrious  citizen  of  our  republic, 
but  so  recent  is  his  departure  from  among  us, 
that  our  assembling  is  rather  an  expression  of  sorrow  for 
his  death  than  of  congratulation  that  such  a  man  was  born 
into  the  world.  His  admirable  writings,  the  beautiful 
products  of  his  peculiar  genius,  remain,  to  be  the  enjoy 
ment  of  the  present  and  future  generations.  We  keep 
the  recollection  of  his  amiable  and  blameless  life,  and  his 
kindly  manners,  and  for  these  we  give  thanks ;  but  the 
thought  will  force  itself  upon  us  that  the  light  of  his 
friendly  eye  is  quenched,  that  we  must  no  more  hear  his 
beloved  voice,  nor  take  his  welcome  hand.  It  is  as  if 
some  genial  year  had  just  closed  and  left  us  in  frost  and 
gloom ;  its  flowery  spring,  its  leafy  summer,  its  plenteous 
autumn,  flown,  never  to  return.  Its  gifts  are  strewn  around 

us;  its  harvests  are  in  our  garners;   but  its  season  of 

77 


78  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

bloom,  and  warmth,  and  fruitfulness  is  past.  We  look 
around  us  and  see  that  the  sunshine,  which  filled  he 
golden  ear  and  tinged  the  reddening  apple,  brightens  the 
earth  no  more. 

Twelve  years  since,  the  task  was  assigned  me  to  deliver 
the  funeral  eulogy  of  Thomas  Cole,  the  great  father  of 
landscape  painting  in  America,  the  artist  who  first  taught 
the  pencil  to  portray,  with  the  boldness  of  nature,  our 
wild  forests  and  lake  shores,  our  mountain  regions  and 
the  borders  of  our  majestic  rivers.  Five  years  later  I  was 
bidden  to  express,  in  such  terms  as  I  coul$  command,  the 
general  sorrow  which  was  felt  for  the  death  of  Fenimore 
Cooper,  equally  great  and  equally  the  leader  of  his  coun 
trymen  in  a  different  walk  of  creative  genius.  Another 
grave  has  been  opened,  and  he  who  has  gone  down  to  it, 
earlier  than  they  in  his  labors  and  his  fame,  was,  like 
them,  foremost  in  the  peculiar  walk  to  which  his  genius 
attracted  him.  Cole  was  taken  from  us  in  the  zenith  of 
his  manhood ;  Cooper,  when  the  sun  of  life  had  stooped 
from  its  meridian.  In  both  instances  the  day  was  dark 
ened  by  the  cloud  of  death  before  the  natural  hour  of  its 
close  ;  but  Irving  was  permitted  to  behold  its  light  until, 
in  the  fulness  of  time  and  by  the  ordinary  appointment  of 
nature,  it  was  carried  below  the  horizon. 

Washington  Irving  was  born  in  New  York,  on  the  third 
of  April,  1783,  but  a  few  days  after  the  news  of  the  treaty 
with  Great  Britain,  acknowledging  our  independence,  had 
been  received,  to  the  great  contentment  of  the  people.  He 


WILLIAM  CTTLLEN  BRYANT.  79 

opened  his  eyes  to  the  light,  therefore,  just  in  the  dawn  of 
that  Sabbath  of  peace  which  brought  rest  to  the  land  after 
a  weary  seven  years'  war — just  as  the  city  of  which  he  was 
a  native,  and  the  republic  of  which  he  was  yet  to  be  the 
ornament,  were  entering  upon  a  career  of  greatness  and 
prosperity  of  which  those  who  inhabited  them  could 
scarce  have  dreamed.  It  seems  fitting  that  one  of  the  first 
births  of  the  new  peace,  so  welcome  to  the  country,  should 
be  that  of  a  genius  as  kindly  and  fruitful  as  peace  itself, 
and  destined  to  make  the  world  better  and  happier  by  its 
gentle  influences.  In  one  respect,  those  who  were  born 
at  that  time  had  the  advantage  of  those  who  are  educated 
under  the  more  vulgar  influences  of  the  present  age.  Be 
fore  their  eyes  were  placed,  in  the  public  actions  of  the 
men  who  achieved  our  revolution,  noble  examples  of  steady 
rectitude,  magnanimous  self-denial,  and  cheerful  self-sacri 
fice  for  the  sake  of  their  country.  Irving  came  into  the 
world  when  these  great  and  virtuous  men  were  in  the 
prime  of  their  manhood,  and  passed  his  youth  in  the  midst 
of  that  general  reverence  which  gathered  round  them  as 
they  grew  old. 

William  Irving,  the  father  of  the  great  author,  was  a 
native  of  Scotland — one  of  a  race  in  which  the  instinct  of 
veneration  is  strong — and  a  Scottish  woman  was  employed 
as  a  nurse  in  his  household.  It  is  related  that  one  day 
while  she  was  walking  in  the  street  with  her  little  charge, 
then  five  years  old,  she  saw  General  "Washington  in  a 
shop,  and,  entering,  led  up  the  boy,  whom  she  presented 


80  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

as  one  to  whom  his  name  had  been  given.  The  general 
turned,  laid  his  hand  on  the  child's  head,  and  gave  him 
his  smile  and  his  blessing,  little  thinking  that  they  were 
bestowed  upon  his  future  biographer.  The  gentle  pres 
sure  of  that  hand  Irving  always  remembered,  and  that 
blessing,  he  believed,  attended  him  through  life.  Who 
shall  say  what  power  that  recollection  may  have  had  in 
keeping  him  true  to  high  and  generous  aims  ? 

At  the  time  that  Washington  Irving  was  born,  the  city 
of  New  York  contained  scarcely  more  than  twenty  thou 
sand  inhabitants.  During  the  war  its  population  had 
probably  diminished.  The  town  was  scarcely  built  up 
to  Warren  street ;  Broadway,  a  little  beyond,  was  lost 
among  grassy  pastures  and  tilled  fields ;  the  Park,  in 
which  now  stands  our  City  Hall,  was  an  open  common, 
and  beyond  it  gleamed,  in  a  hollow  among  the  meadows, 
a  little  sheet  of  fresh  water,  the  Kolch,  from  which  a 
sluggish  rivulet  stole  through  the  low  grounds,  called 
Lispenard's  Meadows,  and  following  the  course  of  what 
is  now  Canal  street,  entered  the  Hudson.  With  the  ex 
ception  of  the  little  corner  of  the  island  below  the  present 
City  Hall,  the  rural  character  of  the  whole  region  was 
unchanged,  and  the  fresh  air  of  the  country  entered  New 
York  at  every  street.  The  town  at  that  time  contained  a 
mingled  population,  drawn  from  different  countries ;  but 
the  descendants  of  the  old  Dutch  settlers  formed  a  large 
proportion  of  the  inhabitants,  and  these  preserved  many 
of  their  peculiar  customs,  and  had  not  ceased  to  use  the 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  81 

speech  of  their  ancestors  at  their  firesides.  Many  of 
them  lived  in  the  quaint  old  houses,  built  of  small  yellow 
bricks  from  Holland,  with  their  notched  gable-ends  on 
the  streets,  which  have  since  been  swept  away  with  the 
language  of  those  who  built  them. 

In  the  surrounding  country,  along  its  rivers  and  beside 
its  harbors,  and  in  many  parts  far  inland,  the  original 
character  of  the  Dutch  settlements  was  still  less  changed. 
Here  they  read  their  Bibles,  and  said  their  prayers,  and 
listened  to  sermons  in  the  ancestral  tongue.  Remains  of 
this  language  yet  linger  in  a  few  neighborhoods ;  but  in 
most,  the  common  schools,  and  the  irruptions  of  the 
Yankee  race,  and  the  growth  of  a  population  newly 
derived  from  Europe,  have  stifled  the  ancient  utterances 
of  New  Amsterdam.  I  remember  that  twenty  years  since 
the  market  people  of  Bergen  chattered  Dutch  in  the 
steamers  which  brought  them  in  the  early  morning  to 
New  York.  I  remember  also  that,  about  ten  years  be 
fore,  there  were  families  in  the  westernmost  towns  of 
Massachusetts  where  Dutch  was  still  the  household 
tongue,  and  matrons  of  the  English  stock,  marrying  into 
them,  were  laughed  at  for  speaking  it  so  badly. 

It  will  be  readily  inferred  that  the  isolation  in  which  the 
use  of  a  language,  strange  to  the  rest  of  the  country,  placed 
these  people,  would  form  them  to  a  character  of  peculiar 
simplicity,  in  which  there  was  a  great  deal  that  was  quaint 
and  not  a  little  that  would  appear  comic  to  their  neighbors 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  stock.  It  was  among  such  a  popula- 


82  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

tion,  friendly  and  hospitable,  wearing  their  faults  on  the 
outside,  and  living  in  homely  comfort  on  their  fertile  and 
ample  acres,  that  the  boyhood  and  early  youth  of  Irving 
were  passed.  He  began,  while  yet  a  stripling,  to  wander 
about  the  surrounding  country,  for  the  love  of  rambling 
was  the  most  remarkable  peculiarity  of  that  period  of  his 
life.  He  became,  as  he  himself  writes,  familiar  with  all 
the  neighboring  places  famous  in  history  or  fable,  knew 
every  spot  where  a  murder  or  a  robbery  had  been  com 
mitted  or  a  ghost  seen ;  strolled  into  the  villages,  noted 
their  customs  and  talked  with  their  sages,  a  welcome 
guest,  doubtless,  with  his  kindly  and  ingenuous  manners 
and  the  natural  playful  turn  of  his  conversation. 

I  dwell  upon  these  particulars  because  they  help  to 
show  here  how  the  mind  of  Irving  was  "trained,  and  by 
what  process  he  made  himself  master  of  the  materials 
afterwards  wrought  into  the  forms  we  so  much  admire.  It 
was  in  these  rambles  that  his  strong  love  of  nature  was 
awakened  and  nourished.  Those  who  only  know  the  island 
of  New  York  as  it  now  is,  see  few  traces  of  the  beauty  it 
wore  before  it  was  levelled  and  smoothed  from  side  to 
side  for  the  builder.  Immediately  without  the  little  town, 
it  was  charmingly  diversified  with  heights  and  hollows, 
groves  alternating  with  sunny  openings,  shining  tracks  of 
rivulets,  quiet  country-seats  with  trim  gardens,  broad 
avenues  of  trees,  and  lines  of  pleached  hawthorn  hedges. 
I  came  to  New  York  in  1825,  and  I  well  recollect  how 
much  I  admired  the  shores  of  the  Hudson  above  Canal 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  S3 

street,  where  the  dark  rocks  jutted  far  out  in  the  water, 
with  little  bays  between,  above  which  drooped  forest  trees 
overrun  with  wild  vines.  No  less  beautiful  were  the  shores 
of  the  East  River,  where  the  orchards  of  the  Stuyvesant 
Estate  reached  to  cliffs  beetling  over  the  water,  and  still 
further  on  were  inlets  between  rocky  banks  bristling  with 
red  cedars.  Some  idea  of  this  beauty  may  be  formed  from 
looking  at  what  remains  of  the  natural  shore  of  New  York 

island  where  the  tides  of  the  East  Eiver  rush  to  and  fro 

i 

by  the  rocky  verge  of  Jones's  Wood. 

Here  wandered  Irving  in  his  youth,  and  allowed  the  as 
pect  of  that  nature  which  he  afterwards  portrayed  so  well 
to  engrave  itself  on  his  heart ;  but  his  excursions  were 
not  confined  to  this  island.  He  became  familiar  with  the 
banks  of  the  Hudson,  the  extraordinary  beauty  of  which 
he  was  the  first  to  describe.  He  made  acquaintance  with 
the  Dutch  neighborhoods  sheltered  by  its  hills,  Nyack, 
Haverstraw,  Sing  Sing  and  Sleepy  Hollow,  and  with  the 
majestic  Highlands  beyond.  His  rambles  in  another  di 
rection  led  him  to  ancient  Communipaw,  lying  in  its  quiet 
recess  by  New  York  Bay ;  to  the  then  peaceful  Gowanus, 
now  noisy  with  the  passage  of  visitors  to  Greenwood  and 
thronged  with  funerals  ;  to  Hoboken,  Horsimus  and  Paulus 
Hook,  which  has  since  become  a  city.  A  ferry-boat  danc 
ing  on  the  rapid  tides  took  him  over  to  Brooklyn,  now 
our  flourishing  and  beautiful  neighbor  city ;  then  a  cluster 
of  Dutch  farms,  whose  possessors  lived  in  broad,  low 
houses,  with  stoops  in  front,  overshadowed  by  trees. 


84  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

The  generation  with  whom  Irving  grew  up  read  the 
"  Spectator  "  and  the  "  Rambler,"  the  essays  and  tales  of 
Mackenzie  and  those  of  Goldsmith  ;  the  novels  of  the  day- 
were  those  of  Richardson,  Fielding  and  Smollett ;  the  reli 
gious  world  were  occupied  with  the  pages  of  Hannah  More, 
fresh  from  the  press,  and  with  the  writings  of  Doddridge  ; 
politicians  sought  their  models  of  style  and  reasoning  in 
the  speeches  of  Burke  and  the  writings  of  Mackintosh 
and  Junius.  These  were  certainly  masters  of  whom  no 
pupil  needed  to  be  ashamed,  but  it  can  hardly  be  said 
that  the  style  of  Irving  was  formed  in  the  school  of  any 
of  them.  His  father's  library  was  enriched  with  authors 
of  the  Elizabethan  age,  and  he  delighted,  we  are  told,  in 
reading  Chaucer  and  Spenser.  The  elder  of  these  great 
poets  might  have  taught  him  the  art  of  heightening  his 
genial  humor  with  poetic  graces,  and  from  both  he  might 
have  learned  a  freer  mastery  over  his  native  English  than 
the  somewhat  formal  taste  of  that  day  encouraged.  Cow- 
per's  poems,  at  that  time,  were  in  everybody's  hands,  and 
if  his  father  had  not  those  of  Burns,  we  must  believe  that 
he  was  no  Scotchman.  I  think  we  may  fairly  infer  that 
if  the  style  of  Irving  took  a  bolder  range  than  was  allowed 
in  the  way  of  writing  which  prevailed  when  he  was  a 
youth,  it  was  owing,  in  a  great  degree,  to  his  studies  in 
the  poets,  and  especially  in  those  of  the  earlier  English 
literature. 

He  owed  little  to  the  schools,  though  he  began  to  at 
tend  them  early.  His  first  instructions  were  given  when 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  85 

lie  was  between  four  and  six  years  old,  by  Mrs.  Ann  Kil- 
master,  at  her  school  in  Ann  street,  who  seems  to  have 
had  some  difficulty  in  getting  him  through  the  alphabet. 
In  1789,  he  was  transferred  to  a  school  in  Fulton  street, 
then  called  Partition  street,  kept  by  Benjamin  Eomaine, 
who  had  been  a  soldier  in  the  Revolution — a  sensible  man 
and  a  good  disciplinarian,  but  probably  an  indifferent 
scholar — and  here  he  continued  till  he  was  fourteen  years 
of  age.  He  was  a  favorite  with  the  master,  but  preferred 
reading  to  regular  study.  At  ten  years  of  age  he  delighted 
in  the  wild  tales  of  Ariosto,  as  translated  by  Hoole ;  at 
eleven,  he  was  deep  in  books  of  voyages  and  travels,  which 
he  took  to  school  and  read  by  stealth.  At  that  time  he 
composed  with  remarkable  ease  and  fluency,  and  exchanged 
tasks  with  the  other  boys,  writing  their  compositions, 
while  they  solved  his  problems  in  arithmetic,  which  he 
detested.  At  the  age  of  thirteen  he  tried  his  hand  at 
composing  a  play,  which  was  performed  by  children  at  a 
friend's  house,  and  of  which  he  afterwards  forgot  every 
part,  even  the  title. 

Eomaine  gave  up  teaching  in  1797,  and  in  that  year 
Irving  entered  a  school  kept  in  Beekman  street,  by  Jona 
than  Irish,  probably  the  most  accomplished  of  his  in 
structors.  He  left  this  school  in  March,  1798,  but  con 
tinued  for  a  time  to  receive  private  lessons  from  the  same 
teacher,  at  home.  Dr.  Francis,  in  his  pleasant  reminis 
cences  of  Irving's  early  life,  speaks  of  him  as  preparing 
to  enter  Columbia  College,  and  as  being  prevented  by  the 


86  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

state  of  his  health ;  but  it  is  certain  that  an  indifference 
to  the  acquisition  of  learning  had  taken  possession  of  him 
at  that  age,  which  he  afterwards  greatly  regretted. 

At  the  age  of  sixteen  he  entered  his  name  as  a  student 
at  law  in  the  office  of  Josiah  Ogden  Hoffman,  an  eminent 
advocate,  who,  in  later  life,  became  a  judge  in  one  of  our 
principal  tribunals.  It  was  while  engaged  in  his  profes 
sional  studies  that  he  made  his  first  appearance  as  an 
author.  I  should  have  mentioned,  among  the  circum 
stances  that  favored  the  unfolding  of  his  literary  capaci 
ties,  that  two  of  his  elder  brothers  were  men  of  decided 
literary  tastes,  William  Irving,  some  seventeen  years  his 
senior,  and  Dr.  Peter  Irving,  who,  in  the  year  1802,  found 
ed  a  daily  paper  in  New  York,  at  a  time  when  a  daily  pa 
per  was  not,  as  now,  an  enterprise  requiring  a  large  out 
lay  of  capital,  but  an  experiment  that  might  be  tried 
and  abandoned  with  little  risk.  Dr.  Irving  established 
the  Morning  Chronicle,  and  his  younger  brother  contrib 
uted  a  series  of  essays,  bearing  the  signature  of  Jona 
than  Oldstyle,  of  which  Mr.  Duyckinck,  whose  judgment 
I  willingly  accept,  says  that  they  show  how  early  he  ac 
quired  the  style  which  so  much  charms  us  in  his  later 
writings. 

In  1804,  having  reached  the  age  of  twenty-one,  Irving, 
alarmed  by  an  increasing  weakness  of  the  chest,  visited 
Europe  for  the  sake  of  his  health.  He  sailed  directly  to 
the  south  of  France,  landed  at  Bordeaux  in  May,  and 
passed  two  months  in  Genoa,  where  he  embarked  for 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  87 

Messina,  in  search  of  a  softer  climate  than  any  to  be 
found  on  the  Italian  peninsula.  While  at  Messina,  he 
saw  the  fleet  of  Nelson  sweeping  by  that  port  on  its  way 
to  fight  the  great  naval  battle  of  Trafalgar.  He  made 
the  tour  of  Sicily,  and  crossing  from  Palermo  to  Naples, 
proceeded  to  Rome.  Here  he  formed  the  acquaintance 
of  Washington  Allston,  who  was  then  entering  on  a  career 
of  art  as  extraordinary  as  that  of  Irving  in  literature. 
With  Allston  he  made  long  rambles  in  the  picturesque 
neighborhood  of  that  old  city,  visited  the  galleries  of  its 
palaces  and  villas,  and  studied  their  works  of  art  with  a 
delight  that  rose  to  enthusiasm.  He  thought  of  the  dry 
pursuit  of  the  law  which  awaited  his  return  to  America, 
and  for  which  he  had  no  inclination,  and  almost  deter 
mined  to  be  a  painter.  Allston  encouraged  him  in  this 
disposition,  and  together  they  planned  the  scheme  of  a 
life  devoted  to  the  pursuit  of  art.  It  was  fortunate  for 
the  world  that,  as  Irving  reflected  on  the  matter,  doubts 
arose  in  his  mind  which  tempered  his  enthusiasm,  and 
led  him  to  a  different  destiny.  The  two  friends  sepa 
rated,  each  to  take  his  own  way  to  renown — Allston  to 
become  one  of  the  greatest  of  painters,  and  Irving  to  take 
his  place  among  the  greatest  of  authors.  Leaving  Italy, 
Irving  passed  through  Switzerland  to  France,  resided  in 
Paris  several  months,  travelled  through  Flanders  and 
Holland,  went  to  England,  and  returned  to  his  native 
country  in  1806,  after  an  absence  of  two  years. 
At  the  close  of  the  year  he  was  admitted  to  practice  as 


88  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

an  attorney-at-law.  He  opened  an  office,  but  it  could  not 
be  said  that  lie  ever  became  a  practitioner.  He  began 
the  year  1807  with  the  earliest  of  those  literary  labors 
which  have  won  him  the  admiration  of  the  world.  On 
the  24th  of  January  appeared,  in  the  form  of  a  small 
pamphlet,  the  first  number  of  a  periodical  entitled  "  Sal 
magundi,"  the  joint  production  of  himself,  his  brother 
William,  and  James  K.  Paulding.  The  elder  brother 
contributed  the  poetry,  with  hints  and  outlines  for  some 
of  the  essays,  but  nearly  all  the  prose  was  written  by  the 
two  younger  associates. 

"William  Irving,  however,  had  talent  enough  to  have 
taken  a  more  important  part  in  the  work.  He  was  a  man 
of  wit,  well  educated,  well  informed,  and  the  author  of 
many  clever  things  written  for  the  press,  in  a  vein  of 
good-natured  satire  and  published  without  his  name. 
He  was  held  in  great  esteem  on  account  of  his  personal 
character,  and  had  great  weight  in  Congress,  of  which  he 
was  for  some  years  a  member.* 

When  "  Salmagundi  "  appeared,  the  quaint  old  Dutch 
town  in  which  Irving  was  born  had  become  transformed 
to  a  comparatively  gay  metropolis.  Its  population  of 
twenty  thousand  souls  had  enlarged  to  more  than  eighty 
thousand,  although  its  aristocratic  class  had  yet  their 
residences  in  what  seems  now  to  us  the  narrow  space 
between  the  Battery  and  Wall  street.  The  modes  and 

*  See  a  brief  but  well-written  memoir  of  William  Irving  by  Dr.  Ber- 
rian. 


WILLIAM  CULLED  BRYANT.  89 

fashions  of  Europe  were  imported  fresh  and  fresh. 
"  Salmagundi "  speaks  of  leather  breeches  as  all  the  rage 
for  a  morning  dress,  and  flesh-colored  smalls  for  an  even 
ing  party.  Gay  equipages  dashed  through  the  streets. 
A  new  theatre  had  risen  in  Park  Kow,  on  the  boards  of 
which  Cooper,  one  of  the  finest  declaimers,  was  perform 
ing  to  crowded  houses.  The  churches  had  multiplied 
faster  than  the  places  of  amusement ;  other  public  build 
ings  of  a  magnificence  hitherto  unknown,  including  our 
present  City  Hall,  had  been  erected ;  Tammany  Hall, 
fresh  from  the  hands  of  the  builder,  overlooked  the 
Park.  We  began  to  affect  a  taste  for  pictures,  and  the 
rooms  of  Michael  Paff,  the  famous  German  picture  dealer 
in  Broadway,  were  a  favorite  lounge  for  such  connois 
seurs  as  we  then  had,  who  amused  themselves  with  mak 
ing  him  talk  of  Michael  Angelo.  Ballston  Springs  were 
the  great  fashionable  watering-place  of  the  country,  to 
which  resorted  the  planters  of  the  South  with  splendid 
equipages  and  troops  of  shining  blacks  in  livery. 

"  Salmagundi  "  satirized  the  follies  and  ridiculed  the 
humors  of  the  time  with  great  prodigality  of  wit  and  no 
less  exuberance  of  good  nature.  In  form  it  resembles  the 
"  Tattler,"  and  that  numerous  brood  of  periodical  papers 
to  which  the  success  of  the  "Tattler"  and  "Spectator" 
gave  birth  ;  but  it  is  in  no  sense  an  imitation.  Its  gaiety 
is  its  own ;  its  style  of  humor  is  not  that  of  Addison  nor 
Goldsmith,  though  it  has  all  the  genial  spirit  of  theirs ; 
nor  is  it  borrowed  from  any  other  writer.  It  is  far  more 


90  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

frolicsome  and  joyous,  yet  tempered  by  a  native  graceful 
ness.  "  Salmagundi  "  was  manifestly  written  without  the 
fear  of  criticism  before  the  eyes  of  the  authors,  and  to 
this  sense  of  perfect  freedom  in  the  exercise  of  their  ge 
nius  the  charm  is  probably  owing  which  makes  us  still 
read  it  with  so  much  delight.  Irving  never  seemed  to 
place  much  value  on  the  part  he  contributed  to  this  work, 
yet  I  doubt  whether  he  ever  excelled  some  of  those  pa 
pers  in  "Salmagundi"  which  bear  the  most  evident  marks 
of  his  style,  and  Paulding,  though  he  has  since  acquired  a 
reputation  by  his  other  writings,  can  hardly  be  said  to 
have  written  anything  better  than  the  best  of  those 
which  are  ascribed  to  his  pen. 

Just  before  "  Salmagundi "  appeared,  several  of  the  au 
thors  who  gave  the  literature  of  England  its  present 
character  had  begun  to  write.  For  five  years  the  quar 
terly  issues  of  the  Edinburgh  Review,  then  in  the  most 
brilliant  period  of  its  existence,  had  been  before  the  pub 
lic.  Hazlitt  had  taken  his  place  among  the  authors,  and 
John  Foster  had  published  his  essays.  Of  the  poets, 
Rogers,  Campbell  and  Moore  were  beginning  to  be  popu 
lar  ;  "Wordsworth  had  published  his  "  Lyrical  Ballads," 
Scott,  his  "Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,"  Southey,  his 
"Madoc,"  and  Joanna  Baillie  two  volumes  of  her  plays. 
In  this  revival  of  the  creative  power  in  literature  it  is 
pleasant  to  see  that  our  own  country  took  part,  contrib 
uting  a  work  of  a  character  as  fresh  and  original  as  any 
they  produced  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic. 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  91 

Nearly  two  years  afterwards,  in  the  autumn  of  1809,ap- 
peared  in  the  Evening  Post,  addressed  to  the  humane, 
an  advertisement  requesting  information  concerning  a 
small  elderly  gentleman  named  Knickerbocker,  dressed 
in  a  black  coat  and  cocked  hat,  who  had  suddenly  left  his 
lodgings  at  the  Columbian  Hotel  in  Mulberry  street,  and 
had  not  been  heard  of  afterwards.  In  the  beginning  of 
November,  a  "Traveller"  communicated  to  the  same 
journal  the  information  that  he  had  seen  a  person  an 
swering  to  this  description,  apparently  fatigued  with  his 
journey,  resting  by  the  road-side  a  little  north  of  Kings- 
bridge.  Ten  days  later  Seth  Handaside,  the  landlord  of 
the  Columbian  Hotel,  gave  notice,  through  the  same  jour 
nal,  that  he  had  found  in  the  missing  gentleman's  cham 
ber  "  a  curious  kind  of  written  book,"  which  he  should 
print  by  way  of  reimbursing  himself  for  what  his  lodger 
owed  him.  In  December  following,  Inskeep  and  Brad 
ford,  booksellers,  published  "  Diedrich  Knickerbocker's 
History  of  New  York." 

"  Salmagundi  "  had  prepared  the  public  to  receive  this 
work  with  favor,  and  Seth  Handaside  had  no  reason  to 
regret  having  undertaken  its  publication.  I  recollect  well 
its  early  and  immediate  popularity.  I  was  then  a  youth 
in  college,  and  having  committed  to  memory  a  portion  of 
it  to  repeat  as  a  declamation  before  my  class,  I  was .  so 
overcome  with  laughter,  when  I  appeared  on  the  floor, 
that  I  was  unable  to  proceed,  and  drew  upon  myself  the 
rebuke  of  the  tutor. 


92  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

I  have  just  read  this  "  History  of  New  York "  over 
again,  and  I  found  myself  no  less  delighted  than  when  I 
first  turned  its  pages  in  my  early  youth.  When  I  com 
pare  it  with  other  works  of  wit  and  humor  of  a  similar 
length,  I  find  that,  unlike  most  of  them,  it  carries  forward 
the  reader  to  the  conclusion  without  weariness  or  satiety, 
so  unsought,  spontaneous,  self-suggested  are  the  wit  and 
the  humor.  The  author  makes  us  laugh,  because  he  can 
no  more  help  it  than  we  can  help  laughing.  Scott,  in  one 
of  his  letters,  compared  the  humor  of  this  work  to  that 
of  Swift.  The  rich  vein  of  Irving' s  mirth  is  of  a  quality 
quite  distinct  from  the  dry  drollery  of  Swift,  but  they 
have  this  in  common,  that  they  charm  by  the  utter  ab 
sence  of  effort,  and  this  was  probably  the  ground  of  Scott's 
remark.  A  critic  in  the  London  Quarterly,  some  years 
after  its  appearance,  spoke  of  it  as  a  "  tantalizing  book," 
on  account  of  his  inability  to  understand  what  he  called 
"  the  point  of  many  of  the  allusions  in  this  political  satire." 
I  fear  he  must  have  been  one  of  those  respectable  persons 
who  find  it  difficult  to  understand  a  joke  unless  it  be  ac 
companied  with  a  commentary  opening  and  explaining  it 
to  the  humblest  capacity.  Scott  found  no  such  difficulty. 
"  Our  sides,"  he  says,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Brevoort,  a  friend 
of  Irving,  written  just  after  he  had  read  the  book,  "  are 
absolutely  sore  with  laughing."  The  mirth  of  the  "  His 
tory  of  New  York  "is  of  the  most  transparent  sort,  and 
the  author,  even  in  the  later  editions,  judiciously  abstained 
from  any  attempt  to  make  it  more  intelligible  by  notes. 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  93 

I  find  in  this  work  more  manifest  traces  than  in  his 
other  writings  of  what  Irving  owed  to  the  earlier  authors 
in  our  language.  The  quaint  poetic  coloring,  and  often 
the  phraseology,  betray  the  disciple  of  Chaucer  and  Spen 
ser.  We  are  conscious  of  a  flavor  of  the  olden  time,  as  of 
a  racy  wine  of  some  rich  vintage — 

"  Cooled  a  long  age  in  the  deep-delved  earth." 

I  will  not  say  that  there  are  no  passages  in  this  work 
which  are  not  worthy  of  their  context ;  that  we  do  not 
sometimes  meet  with  phraseology  which  we  could  wish 
changed,  that  the  wit  does  not  sometimes  run  wild,  and 
drop  here  and  there  a  jest  which  we  could  willingly  spare. 
We  forgive,  we  overlook,  we  forget  all  this  as  we  read,  in 
consideration  of  the  entertainment  we  have  enjoyed,  and 
of  that  which  beckons  us  onward  in  the  next  page.  Of 
all  mock-heroic  works,  "  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New 
York  "  is  the  gayest,  the  airiest,  and  the  least  tiresome. 

In  1848  Mr.  Irving  issued  an  edition  of  this  work,  to 
which  he  prefixed  what  he  called  an  "  Apology,"  intended 
in  part  as  an  answer  to  those  who  thought  he  had  made 
too  free  with  the  names  of  our  old  Dutch  families.  To 
speak  frankly,  I  do  not  much  wonder  that  the  descendants 
of  the  original  founders  of  New  Amsterdam  should  have 
hardly  known  whether  to  laugh  or  look  grave  on  finding 
the  names  of  their  ancestors,  of  whom  they  never  thought 
but  with  respect,  now  connected  with  ludicrous  associa 
tions,  by  a  wit  of  another  race.  In  one  of  his  excellent 


94  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

historical  discourses  Mr.  Verplanck  had  gently  com 
plained  of  this  freedom,  expressing  himself,  as  he  said, 
more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger.  Even  the  sorrow,  I  believe, 
must  have  long  since  wholly  passed  away,  when  it  is  seen 
how  little  Irving's  pleasantries  have  detracted  from  the 
honor  paid  to  the  early  history  of  our  city — at  all  events, 
I  do  not  see  how  it  could  survive  Irving's  good-humored 
and  graceful  Apology. 

It  was  not  long  after  the  publication  of  the  "  History 
of  New  York "  that  Irving  abandoned  the  profession  of 
law,  for  which  he  had  so  decided  a  distaste  as  never  to 
have  fully  tried  his  capacity  for  pursuing  it.  Two  of  his 
brothers  were  engaged  in  commerce,  and  they  received 
him  as  a  silent  partner.  He  did  not,  however,  renounce 
his  literary  occupations.  He  wrote,  in  1810,  a  memoir  of 
Campbell,  the  poet,  prefaced  to  an  edition  of  the  writings 
of  that  author,  which  appeared  in  Philadelphia ;  and  in 
1813  and  the  following  year,  employed  himself  as  editor 
of  the  Analeclic  Magazine^  published  in  the  same  city; 
making  the  experiment  of  his  talent  for  a  vocation  to 
which  men  of  decided  literary  tastes  in  this  country  are 
strongly  inclined  to  betake  themselves.  Those  who  re 
member  this  magazine  cannot  have  forgotten  that  it  was 
a  most  entertaining  miscellany,  partly  compiled  from 
English  publications,  mostly  periodicals,  and  partly 
made  up  of  contributions  of  some  of  our  own  best 
writers.  Paulding  wrote  for  it  a  series  of  biographical 
accounts  of  the  naval  commanders  of  the  United  States, 


WILLIAM  CULLEtf  BRYANT.  95 

which  added  greatly  to  its  popularity ;  and  Yerplanck 
contributed  memoirs  of  Commodore  Stewart  and  General 
Scott,  Barlow,  the  poet,  and  other  distinguished  Ameri 
cans,  which  were  received  with  favor.  The  life  of  Camp 
bell,  with  the  exception  perhaps  of  some  less  important 
contributions  to  the  magazine,  is  the  only  published 
work  of  Irving  between  the  appearance  of  the  "  History 
of  New  York,"  in  1809,  and  that  of  the  "  Sketch-Book," 
in  1819. 

It  was  during  this  interval  that  an  event  took  place 
which  had  a  marked  influence  on  Irving's  future  life,  af 
fected  the  character  of  his  writings,  and,  now  that  the 
death  of  both  parties  allows  it  to  be  spoken  of  without 
reserve,  gives  a  peculiar  interest  to  his  personal  history. 
He  became  attached  to  a  young  lady  whom  he  was  to 
have  married.  She  died  unwedded,  in  the  flower  of  her 
age  ;  there  was  a  sorrowful  leave-taking  between  her  and 
her  lover,  as  the  grave  was  about  to  separate  them  on  the 
eve  of  what  should  have  been  her  bridal ;  and  Irving, 
ever  after,  to  the  close  of  his  life,  tenderly  and  faithfully 
cherished  her  memory.  In  one  of  the  biographical 
notices  published  immediately  after  Irving's  death,  an 
old,  well-worn  copy  of  the  Bible  is  spoken  of,  which  was 
kept  lying  on  the  table  in  his  chamber,  within  reach  of  his 
bedside,  bearing  her  name  on  the  title-page  in  a  delicate 
female  hand — a  relic  which  we  may  presume  to  have 
been  his  constant  companion.  Those  who  are  fond  of 
searching,  in  the  biographies  of  eminent  men,  for  the  cir- 


96  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

cumstances  which  determined  the  bent  of  their  genius, 
find  in  this  sad  event,  and  the  cloud  it  threw  over  the 
hopeful  and  cheerful  period  of  early  manhood,  an  ex 
planation  of  the  transition  from  the  unbounded  playful 
ness  of  the  "  History  of  New  York  "  to  the  serious,  tender, 
and  meditative  vein  of  the  "  Sketch-Book." 

In  1815,  soon  after  our  second  peace  with  Great 
Britain,  Irving  sailed  again  for  Europe,  and  fixed  himself 
at  Liverpool,  where  a  branch  of  the  large  commercial 
house  to  which  he  belonged  was  established.  His  old 
love  of  rambling  returned  upon  him;  he  wandered  first 
into  Wales,  and  over  some  of  the  finest  counties  of  Eng 
land,  and  then  northward  to  the  sterner  region  of  the 
Scottish  Highlands.  His  memoir  of  Campbell  had  pro 
cured  him  the  acquaintance  and  friendship  of  that  poet. 
Campbell  gave  him,  more  than  a  year  after  his  arrival  in 
England,  a  letter  of  introduction  to  Scott,  who,  already 
acquainted  with  him  by  his  writings,  welcomed  him 
warmly  to  Abbotsford,  and  made  him  his  friend  for  life. 
Scott  sent  a  special  message  to  Campbell,  thanking  him 
for  having  made  him  known  to  Irving.  "  He  is  one  of  the 
best  and  pleasantest  acquaintances,"  said  Scott,  "that 
I  have  made  this  many  a  day." 

In  the  same  year  that  he  visited  Abbotsford  his  brothers 
failed.  The  changes  which  followed  the  peace  of  1815 
swept  away  their  fortunes  and  his  together,  and  he  was 
now  to  begin  the  world  anew. 

In  1819,  he  began  to  publish  the  "  Sketch-Book."  It  was 


WIILLAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  97 

written  in  England  and  sent  over  to  New  York,  where  it 
was  issued  by  Yan  Winkle,  in  octavo  numbers,  containing 
from  seventy  to  a  hundred  pages.  In  the  preface  he  re 
marked  that  he  was  "  unsettled  in  his  abode,"  that  he  had 
"his  cares  and  vicissitudes,"  and  could  not,  therefore, 
give  these  papers  the  "tranquil  attention  necessary  to 
finished  composition."  Several  of  them  were  copied  with 
praise  in  the  London  Literary  Gazette,  and  an  intima 
tion  was  conveyed  to  the  author,  that  some  person  in 
London  was  about  to  publish  them  entire.  He  preferred 
to  do  this  himself,  and  accordingly  offered  the  work  to  the 
famous  bookseller,  Murray.  Murray  was  slow  in  giving 
the  matter  his  attention,  and  Irving,  after  a  reasonable 
delay,  wrote  to  ask  that  the  copy  which  he  had  left  with 
him  might  be  returned.  It  was  sent  back  with  a  note, 
pleading  excess  of  occupation,  the  great  cross  of  all  emi 
nent  booksellers,  and  alleging  the  "  want  of  scope  in  the 
nature  of  the  work,"  as  a  reason  for  declining  it.  This 
was  discouraging,  but  Irving  had  the  enterprise  to  print 
the  first  volume  in  London,  at  his  own  risk.  It  was  is 
sued  by  John  Miller,  and  was  well  received,  but  in  a  month 
afterward  the  publisher  failed.  Immediately  Sir  Walter 
Scott  came  to  London  and  saw  Murray,  who  allowed  him 
self  to  be  persuaded,  the  more  easily,  doubtless,  on  account 
of  the  partial  success  of  the  first  volume,  that  the  work 
had  more  "  scope"  than  he  supposed,  and  purchased  the 
copyright  of  both  volumes  for  two  hundred  pounds,  which 
he  afterwards  liberally  raised  to  four  hundred. 
7 


98  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

Whoever  compares  the  "  Sketch-Book  "  with  the  "His 
tory  of  New  York  "  might  at  first,  perhaps,  fail  to  recognize 
it  as  the  work  of  the  same  hand,  so  much  graver  and  more 
thoughtful  is  the  strain  in  which  it  is  written.  A  more 
attentive  examination,  however,  shows  that  the  humor  in 
the  lighter  parts  is  of  the  same  peculiar  and  original  cast, 
wholly  unlike  that  of  any  author  who  ever  wrote,  a  humor 
which  Mr.  Dana  happily  characterized  as  "  a  fanciful  play 
ing  with  common  things,  and  here  and  there  beautiful 
touches,  till  the  ludicrous  becomes  half  picturesque." 
Yet  one  cannot  help  perceiving  that  the  author's  spirit 
had  been  sobered  since  he  last  appeared  before  the  pub 
lic,  as  if  the  shadow  of  a  great  sorrow  had  fallen  upon  it. 
The  greater  number  of  the  papers  are  addressed  to  our 
deeper  sympathies,  and  some  of  them,  as,  for  example, 
the  Broken  Heart,  the  Widow  and  Her  Son,  and  Rural 
Funerals,  dwell  upon  the  saddest  themes.  Only  in  two  of 
them — Rip  Yan  Winkle  and  the  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow 
— does  he  lay  the  reins  loose  on  the  neck  of  his  frolicsome 
fancy,  and  allow  it  to  dash  forward  without  restraint ;  and 
these  rank  among  the  most  delightful  and  popular  tales 
ever  written.  In  our  country  they  have  been  read,  I  be 
lieve,  by  nearly  everybody  who  can  read  at  all. 

The  "Sketch-Book,"  and  the  two  succeeding  works  of 
Irving,  "Bracebridge  Hall"  and  the  "Tales  of  a  Travel 
ler,"  abound  with  agreeable  pictures  of  English  life,  seen 
under  favorable  lights  and  sketched  with  a  friendly  pen 
cil.  Let  me  say  here,  that  it  was  not  to  pay  court  to 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  99 

the  English  that  he  thus  described  them  and  their  coun 
try  ;  it  was  because  he  could  not  describe  them  other 
wise.  It  was  the  instinct  of  his  mind  to  attach  itself  to 
the  contemplation  of  the  good  and  the  beautiful,  wherever 
he  found  them,  and  to  turn  away  from  the  sight  of  what 
was  evil,  misshapen,  and  hateful.  His  was  not  a  nature 
to  pry  for  faults,  or  disabuse  the  world  of  good-natured 
mistakes;  he  looked  for  virtue,  love,  and  truth  among 
men,  and  thanked  God  that  he  found  them  in  such  large 
measure.  If  there  are  touches  of  satire  in  his  writings, 
he  is  the  best-natured  and  most  amiable  of  satirists,  ami 
able  beyond  Horace  ;  and  in  his  irony — for  there  is  a 
vein  of  playful  irony  running  through  many  of  his  works 
— there  is  no  tinge  of  bitterness. 

I  rejoice,  for  my  part,  that  we  have  had  such  a  writer 
as  Irving  to  bridge  over  the  chasm  between  the  two 
great  nations — that  an  illustrious  American  lived  so  long 
in  England,  and  was  so  much  beloved  there,  and  sought 
so  earnestly  to  bring  the  people  of  the  two  countries  to  a 
better  understanding  with  each  other,  and  to  wean  them 
from  the  animosities  of  narrow  minds.  I  am  sure  that 
there  is  not  a  large-minded  and  large-hearted  man  in  all 
our  country  who  can  read  over  the  "  Sketch-Book  "  and 
the  other  writings  of  Irving,  and  disown  one  of  the  mag 
nanimous  sentiments  they  express  with  regard  to  Eng 
land,  or  desire  to  abate  the  glow  of  one  of  his  warm  and 
cheerful  pictures  of  English  life.  Occasions  will  arise,  no 
doubt,  for  saying  some  things  in  a  less  accommodating 


100  WASHINGTON  IR  VING. 

spirit,  and  there  are  men  enough  on  both  sides  of  the  At 
lantic  who  can  say  them  ;  but  Irving  was  not  sent  into 
the  world  on  that  errand.  A  different  work  was  assigned 
him  in  the  very  structure  of  his  mind,  and  the  endow 
ments  of  his  heart — a  work  of  peace  and  brotherhood, 
and  I  will  say  for  him  that  he  nobly  performed  it. 

Let  me  pause  here  to  speak  of  what  I  believe  to  have 
been  the  influence  of  the  "  Sketch-Book  "  upon  American 
literature.  At  the  time  it  appeared  the  periodical  lists  of 
new  American  publications  were  extremely  meagre,  and 
consisted,  to  a  great  extent,  of  occasional  pamphlets  and 
dissertations  on  the  questions  of  the  day.  The  works  of 
greater  pretension  were,  for  the  most  part,  crudely  and 
languidly  made  up,  and  destined  to  be  little  read.  A 
work  like  the  "  Sketch-Book,"  welcomed  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic,  showed  the  possibility  of  an  American  au 
thor  acquiring  a  fame  bounded  only  by  the  limits  of  his 
own  language,  and  gave  an  example  of  the  qualities  by 
which  it  might  be  won.  "Within  two  years  afterwards  we 
had  Cooper's  "  Spy  "  and  Dana's  "  Idle  Man  ; "  the  press 
of  our  country  began,  by  degrees,  to  teem  with  works 
composed  with  a  literary  skill  and  a  spirited  activity  of 
intellect  until  then  little  known  among  us.  Every  year 
the  assertion  that  we  had  no  literature  of  our  own  be 
came  less  and  less  true :  and  now,  when  we  look  over  a 
list  of  new  works  by  native  authors,  we  find,  with  an  as 
tonishment  amounting  almost  to  alarm,  that  the  most  vo 
racious  devourer  of  books  must  despair  of  being  able  to 


WILLIAM  CULLED  BRYANT.  1Q1 

read  half  those  which  make  a  fair  claim  upon  his  atten 
tion.  It  was  since  1819  that  the  great  historians  of  our 
country,  whose  praise  is  in  the  mouths  of  all  the  nations, 
began  to  write.  One  of  them  built  up  the  fabric  of  his 
fame  long  after  Irving  appeared  as  an  author,  and  slept 
with  Herodotus  two  years  before  Irving's  death  ;  another 
of  the  band  lives  yet  to  be  the  ornament  of  the  associa 
tion  before  which  I  am  called  to  speak,  and  is  framing 
the  annals  of  his  country  into  a  work  for  future  ages. 
Within  that  period  has  arisen  among  us  the  class  who 
hold  vast  multitudes  spell-bound  in  motionless  attention 
by  public  discourses,  the  most  perfect  of  their  kind,  such 
as  make  the  fame  of  Everett.  Within  that  period  our 
theologians  have  learned  to  write  with  the  elegance  and 
vivacity  of  the  essayists.  We  had  but  one  novelist  be 
fore  the  era  of  the  "  Sketch-Book ; "  their  number  is  now 
beyond  enumeration  by  any  but  a  professed  catalogue- 
maker,  and  many  of  them  are  read  in  every  cultivated  form 
of  human  speech.  Those  whom  we  acknowledge  as  our 
poets  —  one  of  whom  is  the  special  favorite  of  our 
brothers  in  language  who  dwell  beyond  sea — appeared  in 
the  world  of  letters  and  won  its  attention  after  Irving 
had  become  famous.  We  have  wits,  and  humorists,  and 
amusing  essayists,  authors  of  some  of  the  airiest  and 
most  graceful  compositions  of  the  present  century,  and 
we  owe  them  to  the  new  impulse  given  to  our  literature 
in  1819.  I  look  abroad  on  these  stars  of  our  literary  fir- 
manent — some  crowded  together  with  their  minute  points 


102  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

of  light  in  a  galaxy — some  standing  apart  in  glorious  con 
stellations  ;  I  recognize  Arcturus,  and  Orion,  and  Perse 
us,  and  the  glittering  jewels  of  the  Southern  Crown,  and 
the  Pleiades  shedding  sweet  influences  ;  but  the  Evening 
Star,  the  soft  and  serene  light  that  glowed  in  their  van, 
the  precursor  of  them  all,  has  sunk  below  the  horizon. 
The  spheres,  meantime,  perform  their  appointed  courses ; 
the  same  motion  which  lifted  them  up  to  the  mid-sky 
bears  them  onward  to  their  setting ;  and  they,  too,  like 
their  bright  leader,  must  soon  be  carried  by  it  below  the 
earth. 

Irving  went  to  Paris  in  1820,  where  he  passed  the  re 
mainder  of  the  year  and  part  of  the  next,  and  where  he 
became  acquainted  with  the  poet  Moore,  who  frequently 
mentions  him  in  his  Diary.  Moore  and  he  were  much  in 
each  other's  company,  and  the  poet  has  left  on  record  an 
expression  of  his  amazement  at  the  rapidity  with  which 
"  Bracebridge  Hall  "  was  composed — one  hundred  and 
thirty  pages  in  ten  days.  The  winter  of  1822  found  him 
in  Dresden.  In  that  year  was  published  "  Bracebridge 
Hall,"  the  groundwork  of  which  is  a  charming  description 
of  country  life  in  England,  interspersed  with  narratives, 
the  scene  of  which  is  laid  in  other  countries.  Of  these, 
the  Norman  tale  of  "  Annette  Delarbre  "  seems  to  me  the 
most  beautiful  and  affecting  thing  of  its  kind  in  all  his 
works ;  so  beautiful,  indeed,  that  I  can  hardly  see  how  he 
who  has  once  read  it  can  resist  the  desire  to  read  it 
again.  In  "  Bracebridge  Hall "  we  have  the  Stout  Gen- 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  103 

tleman,  full  of  certain  minute  paintings  of  familiar  ob 
jects,  where  not  a  single  touch  is  thrown  in  that  does  not 
heighten  the  comic  effect  of  the  narrative.  If  I  am  not 
greatly  mistaken,  the  most  popular  novelists  of  the  day 
have  learned  from  this  pattern  the  skill  with  which  they 
have  wrought  up  some  of  their  most  striking  passages, 
both  grave  and  gay.  In  composing  "  Bracebridge  Hall," 
Irving  showed  that  he  had  not  forgotten  his  native  coun 
try  ;  and  in  the  pleasant  tale  of  Dolph  Heyliger  he  went 
back  to  the  banks  of  that  glorious  river  beside  which  he 
was  born. 

In  1823,  Irving,  still  a  wanderer,  returned  to  Paris,  and 
in  the  year  following  gave  the  world  his  "  Tales  of  a 
Traveller."  Murray,  in  the  meantime,  had  become  fully 
weaned  from  the  notion  that  Irving's  writings  lacked  the 
quality  which  he  called  "  scope,"  for  he  had  paid  a  thou 
sand  guineas  for  the  copyright  of  "  Bracebridge  Hall," 
and  now  offered  fifteen  hundred  pounds  for  the  "  Tales  of 
a  Traveller,"  which  Irving  accepted.  "  He  might  have 
had  two  thousand,"  says  Moore,  but  this  assembly  will 
not,  I  hope,  think  the  worse  of  him,  if  it  be  acknowl 
edged  that  the  world  contained  men  who  were  sharper 
than  he  at  driving  a  bargain.  The  "Tales  of  a  Travel 
ler"  are  most  remarkable  for  their  second  part,  entitled 
"  Buckthorn  and  his  Friends,"  in  which  the  author  intro 
duces  us  to  literary  life  in  its  various  aspects,  as  he  had 
observed  it  in  London,  and  to  the  relations  in  which 
authors  at  that  time  stood  to  the  booksellers.  His 


104  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

sketches  of  the  different  personages  are  individual,  char 
acteristic  and  diverting,  yet  with  what  a  kindly  pencil 
they  are  all  drawn!  His  good  nature  overspreads  and 
harmonizes  everything,  like  the  warm  atmosphere  which 
so  much  delights  us  in  a  painting. 

Irving,  still  "  unsettled  in  his  abode,"  passed  the  win 
ter  of  1825  in  the  south  of  France.  When  you  are  in 
that  region  you  see  the  snowy  summits  of  the  Spanish 
Pyrenees  looking  down  upon  you ;  Spanish  visitors  fre 
quent  the  watering-places;  Spanish  peddlers,  in  their 
handsome  costume,  offer  you  the  fabrics  of  Barcelona  and 
Valencia ;  Spanish  peasants  come  to  the  fairs ;  the  travel 
ler  feels  himself  almost  in  Spain  already,  and  is  haunted 
by  the  desire  of  visiting  that  remarkable  country.  To 
Spain  Irving  went  in  the  latter  part  of  the  year,  invited 
by  our  Minister  at  Madrid,  Alexander  H.  Everett,  at  the 
suggestion  of  Mr.  Rich,  the  American  Consul,  an  indus 
trious  and  intelligent  collector  of  Spanish  works  relating 
to  America.  His  errand  was  to  translate  into  English 
the  documents  relating  to  the  discovery  and  early  history 
of  our  Continent,  collected  by  the  research  of  Navarrete. 
He  passed  the  winter  of  1826  at  the  Spanish  capital,  as 
the  guest  of  Mr.  Eich ;  the  following  season  took  him  to 
Granada,  and  he  lingered  awhile  in  that  beautiful  region, 
profusely  watered  by  the  streams  that  break  from  the 
Snowy  Eidge.  In  1827,  he  again  visited  the  south  of 
Spain,  gathering  materials  for  his  "  Life  of  Columbus," 
which,  immediately  after  his  arrival  in  Spain,  he  had  de- 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  105 

termined  to  write,  instead  of  translating  the  documents 
of  Navarrete.  In  Spain  he  began  and  finished  that  work 
after  having  visited  the  places  associated  with  the  princi 
pal  events  in  the  life  of  his  hero.  Murray  was  so  well 
satisfied  with  its  "  scope  "  that  he  gave  him  three  thou 
sand  guineas  for  the  copyright,  and  laid  it  before  the 
public  in  1828.  Like  the  other  works  of  Irving' s,  it  was 
published  here  at  the  same  time  as  in  London. 

The  "Life  and  Yoyages  of  Christopher  Columbus" 
placed  Irving  among  the  historians,  for  the  biography  of 
that  great  discoverer  is  a  part,  and  a  remarkable  part,  of 
the  history  of  the  world.  Of  what  was  strictly  and  sim 
ply  personal  in  his  adventures,  much,  of  course,  has 
passed  into  irremediable  oblivion ;  what  was  both  per 
sonal  and  historical  is  yet  outstanding  above  the  shadow 
that  has  settled  upon  the  rest.  The  work  of  Irving  was 
at  once  in  everybody's  hands  and  eagerly  read.  Navar 
rete  vouched  for  its  historical  accuracy  and  complete 
ness.  Jeffrey  declared  that  no  work  could  ever  take  its 
place.  It  was  written  with  a  strong  love  of  the  subject, 
and  to  this  it  owes  much  of  its  power  over  the  reader. 
Columbus  was  one  of  those  who,  with  all  their  faculties 
occupied  by  one  great  idea,  and  bent  on  making  it  a 
practical  reality,  are  looked  upon  as  crazed,  and  pitied 
and  forgotten  if  they  fail,  but  if  they  succeed  are  vene 
rated  as  the  glory  of  their  age.  The  poetic  elements  of 
his  character  and  history,  the  grandeur  and  mystery  of 
his  design,  his  prophetic  sagacity,  his  hopeful  and  devout 


106  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

courage,  and  his  disregard  of  the  ridicule  of  meaner  in 
tellects,  took  a  strong  hold  on  the  mind  of  Irving,  and 
formed  the  inspiration  of  the  work. 

Mr.  Duyckinck  gives,  on  the  authority  of  one  who  knew 
Irving  intimately,  an  instructive  anecdote  relating  to  the 
"Life  of  Columbus."  When  the  work  was  nearly  finished 
it  was  put  into  the  hands  of  Lieutenant  Slidell  Macken 
zie,  himself  an  agreeable  writer,  then  on  a  visit  to  Spain, 
who  read  it  with  a  view  of  giving  a  critical  opinion  of  its 
merits.  "  It  is  quite  perfect,"  said  he,  on  returning  the 
manuscript,  "except  the  style,  and  that  is  unequal." 
The  remark  made  such  an  impression  on  the  mind  of  the 
author  that  he  wrote  over  the  whole  narrative  with  the 
view  of  making  the  style  more  uniform,  but  he  afterwards 
thought  that  he  had  not  improved  it. 

In  this  I  have  no  doubt  that  Irving  was  quite  right, 
and  that  it  would  have  been  better  if  he  had  never 
touched  the  work  after  he  had  brought  it  to  the  state 
which  satisfied  his  individual  judgment.  An  author  can 
scarce  commit  a  greater  error  than  to  alter  what  he 
writes,  except  when  he  has  a  clear  perception  that  the  al 
teration  is  for  the  better,  and  can  make  it  with  as  hearty 
a  confidence  in  himself  as  he  felt  in  giving  the  work  its 
first  shape.  "What  strikes  me  as  an  occasional  defect  in 
the  "  Life  of  Columbus  "  is  this  elaborate  uniformity  of 
style — a  certain  prismatic  coloring  in  passages  where  ab 
solute  simplicity  would  have  satisfied  us  better.  It  may 
well  be  supposed  that  Irving  originally  wrote  some  parts 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  107 

of  the  work  with  the  quiet  plainness  of  a  calm  relater  of 
facts,  and  others,  with  the  spirit  and  fire  of  one  who  had 
become  warmed  with  his  subject,  and  this  probably  gave 
occasion  to  what  was  said  of  the  inequality  of  the  style. 
The  attempt  to  elevate  the  diction  of  the  simpler  portions, 
we  may  suppose,  marred  what  Irving  afterwards  per 
ceived  had  really  been  one  of  the  merits  of  the  work. 

In  the  spring  of  1829,  Irving  made  another  visit  to  the 
south  of  Spain,  collecting  materials  from  which  he  after 
wards  composed  some  of  his  most  popular  works.  When 
the  traveller  now  visits  Granada  and  is  taken  to  the  Al- 
hambra,  his  guide  will  say,  "  Here  is  one  of  the  curiosi 
ties  of  the  place ;  this  is  the  chamber  occupied  by  Wash 
ington  Irving,"  and  he  will  show  an  apartment,  from  the 
windows  of  which  you  have  a  view  of  the  glorious  valley 
of  the  Genii,  with  the  mountain  peaks  overlooking  it, 
and  hear  the  murmur  of  many  mountain  brooks  at  once, 
as  they  hurry  to  the  plain.  In  July  of  the  same  year,  he 
repaired  to  London,  where  he  was  to  act  as  Secretary  of 
the  American  Legation.  We  had  at  that  time  certain 
controversies  with  the  British  government  which  were 
the  subject  of  negotiation.  Irving  took  great  interest  in 
these,  and  in  some  letters  which  I  saw  at  the  time, 
stated  the  points  in  dispute  at  considerable  length  and 
with  admirable  method  and  perspicuity.  In  London  he 
published  his  "  Chronicles  of  the  Conquest  of  Granada," 
one  of  the  most  delightful  of  his  works,  an  exact  history, 
for  such  it  is  admitted  to  be  by  those  who  have  searched 


108  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

most  carefully  the  ancient  records  of  Spain,  yet  so  full  of 
personal  incident,  so  diversified  with  surprising  turns  of 
fortune,  and  these  wrought  up  with  such  picturesque  ef 
fect,  that,  to  use  an  expression  of  Pope,  a  young  lady 
might  read  it  by  mistake  for  a  romance.  In  1831,  he 
gave  the  world  another  work  on  Spanish  history,  the 
"  Voyages  of  the  Companions  of  Columbus,"  and  in  the 
year  following  the  "Alhambra,"  which  is  another 
"  Sketch-Book,"  with  the  scenes  laid  in  Spain. 

While  in  Spain,  Irving  had  planned  a  Life  of  Cortez, 
the  Conqueror  of  Mexico,  and  collected  the  facts  from 
which  it  was  to  be  written.  When,  afterwards,  he  had 
actually  begun  the  composition  of  the  work,  he  happened 
to  learn  that  Prescott  designed  to  write  the  "  History  of 
the  Mexican  Conquest,"  and  immediately  he  desisted.  It 
was  his  intention  to  interweave  with  the  narrative,  de 
scriptions  of  the  ancient  customs  of  the  aborigines,  such 
as  their  modes  of  warfare  and  their  gorgeous  pageants, 
by  way  of  relief  to  the  sanguinary  barbarities  of  the  Con 
quest.  He  saw  what  rich  materials  of  the  picturesque 
these  opened  to  him,  and  if  he  had  accomplished  his 
plan,  he  would  probably  have  produced  one  of  his  most 
popular  works. 

In  1832  Irving  returned  to  New  York.  He  returned, 
after  an  absence  of  seventeen  years,  to  find  his  native  city 
doubled  in  population ;  its  once  quiet  waters  alive  with 
sails  and  furrowed  by  steamers  passing  to  and  fro,  its 
wharves  crowded  with  masts ;  the  heights  which  surround 


WILLIAM  CULLEJV  BRYANT.  109 

it,  and  which  he  remembered  wild  and  solitary  and  lying 
in  forest,  now  crowned  with  stately  country  seats  or  with 
dwellings  clustered  in  villages,  and  everywhere  the  ac 
tivity  and  bustle  of  a  prosperous  and  hopeful  people. 
And  he,  too,  how  had  he  returned  ?  The  young  and  com 
paratively  obscure  author,  whose  works  had  only  found 
here  and  there  a  reader  in  England,  had  achieved  a  fame 
as  wide  as  the  civilized  world.  All  the  trophies  he  had 
won  in  this  field  he  brought  home  to  lay  at  the  feet  of 
his  country.  Meanwhile  all  the  country  was  moved  to 
meet  him ;  the  rejoicing  was  universal  that  one  who  had 
represented  us  so  illustriously  abroad  was  henceforth  to 
live  among  us. 

Irving  hated  public  dinners,  but  he  was  forced  to 
accept  one  pressed  upon  him  by  his  enthusiastic  coun 
trymen.  It  was  given  at  the  City  Hotel  on  the  30th  of 
May,  Chancellor  Kent  presiding,  and  the  most  eminent 
citizens  of  New  York  assembled  at  the  table.  I  remem 
ber  the  accounts  of  this  festivity  reaching  me  as  I  was 
wandering  in  Illinois,  hovering  on  the  skirts  of  the  Indian 
war,  in  a  region  now  populous,  but  then  untilled  and 
waste,  and  I  could  only  write  to  Irving  and  ask  leave  to 
add  my  voice  to  the  general  acclamation.  In  his  address 
at  the  dinner,  Chancellor  Kent  welcomed  the  historian  of 
New  Amsterdam  back  to  his  native  city,  and  Irving,  in 
reply,  poured  forth  his  heart  in  the  warmest  expressions 
of  delight  at  finding  himself  again  among  his  countrymen 
and  kindred,  in  a  land  of  sunshine  and  freedom  and  hope. 


HO  WASHINGTON  lEVING. 

"  I  am  asked,"  he  said,  "  how  long  I  mean  to  remain 
here.  They  know  little  of  my  heart  who  can  ask  me  this 
question.  I  answer,  as  long  as  I  live." 

The  instinct  of  rambling  had  not,  however,  forsaken 
him.  In  the  summer  after  his  return  he  made  a  journey 
to  the  country  west  of  the  Mississippi,  in  company  with 
Mr.  Ellsworth,  a  commissioner  intrusted  with  the  re 
moval  of  certain  Indian  tribes,  and  roamed  over  wild 
regions,  then  the  hunting-grounds  of  the  savage,  but  into 
which  the  white  man  has  since  brought  his  plough  and 
his  herds.  He  did  not  publish  his  account  of  this  jour 
ney  until  1835,  when  it  appeared  as  the  first  volume  of  the 
"  Crayon  Miscellany,"  under  the  title  of  a  "  Tour  on  the 
Prairies."  In  this  work  the  original  West  is  described 
as  Irving  knew  how  to  describe  it,  and  the  narrative  is  in 
that  vein  of  easy  gaiety  peculiar  to  his  writings.  "  Ab- 
botsford  and  Newstead  Abbey  "  formed  the  second  volume 
of  the  "  Crayon  Miscellany,"  and  to  these  he  afterwards 
added  another,  entitled  "  Legends  of  the  Conquest  of 
Spain." 

In  1836  he  published  "  Astoria ;  or,  Anecdotes  of  an 
Enterprise  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains  ; "  a  somewhat 
curious  example  of  literary  skill.  A  voluminous  com 
mercial  correspondence  was  the  dull  ore  of  the  earth 
which  he  refined  and  wrought  into  symmetry  and  splen 
dor.  Irving  reduced  to  a  regular  narrative  the  events  to 
which  it  referred,  bringing  out  the  picturesque  whenever 
he  found  it,  and  enlivening  the  whole  with  touches  of  his 


WILLIAM  CULLED  BRYANT. 

native  humor.  His  nephew,  Pierre  M.  Irving,  lightened 
his  labor  materially  by  examining  and  collating  the  let 
ters  and  making  memoranda  of  their  contents.  In  1837, 
he  prepared  for  the  press  the  "Adventures  of  Captain 
Bonneville,  of  the  United  States  Army,  in  the  Eocky 
Mountains  and  the  Far  "West."  He  had  the  manuscript 
journal  of  Bonneville  before  him,  but  the  hand  of  Irving 
is  apparent  in  every  sentence. 

About  the  time  that  this  work  appeared,  Irving  was 
drawn  into  the  only  public  controversy  in  which,  so  far 
as  I  know,  he  ever  engaged.  William  Leggett  then 
conducted  a  weekly  periodical  entitled  the  Plaindedler, 
remarkable  both  for  its  ability  and  its  love  of  disputa 
tion.  It  attacked  Mr.  Irving  for  altering  a  line  or  two  in 
one  of  my  poems,  with  a  view  of  making  it  less  offensive 
to  English  readers,  and  for  writing  a  preface  to  the  Amer 
ican  edition  of  his  "  Tour  on  the  Prairies,"  full  of  pro 
fessions  of  love  for  his  country,  which  were  studiously 
omitted  from  the  English  edition.  From  these  circum 
stances  the  Plaindecder  drew  an  inference  unfavorable  to 
Irving' s  sincerity. 

I  should  here  mention,  and  I  hope  I  may  do  it  without 
much  egotism,  that  when  a  volume  of  my  poems  was 
published  here  in  the  year  1832,  Mr.  Verplanck  had  the 
kindness  to  send  a  copy  of  it  to  Irving,  desiring  him  to 
find  a  publisher  for  it  in  England.  This  he  readily 
engaged  to  do,  though  wholly  unacquainted  with  me,  and 
offered  the  volume  to  Murray.  "Poetry  does  not  sell 


112  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

at  present,"  said  Murray,  and  declined  it.  A  bookseller 
in  Bond  street,  named  Andrews,  undertook  its  publica 
tion,  but  required  that  Irving  should  introduce  it  with  a 
preface  of  his  own.  He  did  so,  speaking  of  my  verses  in 
such  terms  as  would  naturally  command  for  them  the 
attention  of  the  public,  and  allowing  his  name  to  be 
placed  in  the  title-page  as  the  editor.  The  edition,  in 
consequence,  found  a  sale.  It  happened,  however,  that 
the  publisher  objected  to  two  lines  in  a  poem  called  the 
"  Song  of  Marion's  Men."  One  of  them  was 

"  The  British  soldier  trembles," 

and  Irving  good-naturedly  consented  that  it  should  be 

altered  to 

"  The  foeman  trembles  in  his  camp." 

The  other  alteration  was  of  a  similar  character. 

To  the  accusations  of  the  Plaindeakr,  Irving  replied 
with  a  mingled  spirit  and  dignity  which  almost  makes  us 
regret  that  his  faculties  were  not  oftener  roused  into 
energy  by  such  collisions,  or,  at  least,  that  he  did  not 
sometimes  employ  his  pen  on  controverted  points.  He 
fully  vindicated  himself  in  both  instances,  showing  that 
he  had  made  the  alterations  in  my  poem  from  a  simple 
desire  to  do  me  service,  and  that  with  regard  to  the 
"  Tour  on  the  Prairies,"  he  had  sent  a  manuscript  copy 
of  it  to  England  for  publication,  at  the  same  time  that  he 
sent  another  to  the  printer  here,  and  that  it  would  have 
been  an  absurdity  to  address  the  English  edition  to  the 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  H3 

American  public.  But  as  this  was  the  first  time  that  he 
had  appeared  before  his  countrymen  as  an  author  since 
his  return  from  Europe,  it  was  but  proper  that  he  should 
express  to  them  the  feelings  awakened  by  their  generous 
welcome.  "These  feelings,"  he  said,  "were  genuine, 
and  were  not  expressed  with  half  the  warmth  with  which 
they  were  entertained;"  an  assertion  which  every  reader, 
I  believe,  was  disposed  to  receive  literally. 

In  his  answer  to  the  Plaindealer,  some  allusions 
were  made  to  me  which  seemed  to  imply  that  I  had 
taken  part  in  this  attack  upon  him.  To  remove  the  im 
pression,  I  sent  a  note  to  the  Plaindealer  for  publica 
tion,  in  which  I  declared  in  substance  that  I  never  had 
complained  of  the  alterations  of  my  poem — that  though 
they  were  not  such  as  I  should  have  made,  I  was  certain 
they  were  made  with  the  kindest  intentions,  and  that 
I  had  no  feeling  toward  Mr.  Irving  but  gratitude  for  the 
service  he  had  rendered  me.  The  explanation  was  gra 
ciously  accepted,  and  in  a  brief  note,  printed  in  the 
Plaindealer,  Irving  pronounced  my  acquittal. 

Several  papers  were  written  by  Irving  in  1839  and  the 
following  year,  for  Ihe  Knickerbocker,  a  monthly  peri 
odical  conducted  by  his  friend,  Lewis  Gaylord  Clark,  all 
of  them  such  as  he  only  could  write.  They  were  after 
ward  collected  into  a  volume,  entitled  "  Wolfert's  Boost," 
from  the  ancient  name  of  that  beautiful  residence  of  his 
on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  in  which  they  were  mostly 
written.  They  were,  perhaps,  read  with  more  interest  in 


114  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

the  volume  than  in  the  magazine,  just  as  some  paintings 
of  the  highest  merit  are  seen  with  more  pleasure  in  the 
artist's  room  than  on  the  walls  of  an  exhibition. 

In  1842  he  went  to  Spain  as  the  American  Minister, 
and  remained  in  that  country  for  four  years.  I  have 
never  understood  that  anything  occurred  during  that 
time  to  put  his  talents  as  a  negotiator  to  any  rigorous 
test.  He  was  a  sagacious  and  intelligent  observer ;  his 
connection  with  the  American  Legation  in  London  had 
given  him  diplomatic  experience,  and  I  have  heard  that 
he  sent  home  to  his  government  some  valuable  de 
spatches  on  the  subject  of  our  relations  with  Spain.  In 
other  respects,  he  did,  at  least,  what  all  American  minis 
ters  at  the  European  courts  are  doing,  and  I  suppose  my 
hearers  understand  very  well  what  that  is ;  but  if  there 
had  been  any  question  of  importance  to  be  settled,  I 
think  he  might  have  acquitted  himself  as  well  as  many 
who  have  had  a  higher  reputation  for  dexterity  in  busi 
ness.  When  I  was  at  Madrid  in  1857,  a  distinguished 
Spaniard  said  to  me  :  "  Why  does  not  your  government 
send  out  Washington  Irving  to  this  court  ?  Why  do  you 
not  take  as  your  agent  the  man  whom  all  Spain  admires, 
venerates,  loves  ?  I  assure  you,  it  would  be  difficult  for 
our  government  to  refuse  anything  which  Irving  should 
ask,  and  his  signature  would  make  almost  any  treaty  ac 
ceptable  to  our  people." 

Eeturning  in  1846,  Irving  went  back  to  Sunnyside,  on 
the  Hudson,  and  continued  to  make  it  his  abode  for  the 


WILLIAM  CULLEtf  BRYANT.  H5 

rest  of  his  life.  Those  who  passed  up  and  down  the 
river  before  the  year  1835,  may  remember  a  neglected 
cottage  on  a  green  bank,  with  a  few  locust-trees  before  it, 
close  to  where  a  little  brook  brings  in  its  tribute  to  the 
mightier  stream.  In  that  year  Irving  became  its  posses 
sor  ;  he  gave  it  the  name  it  now  wears,  planted  its  pleas 
ant  slopes  with  trees  and  shrubs,  laid  it  out  in  walks, 
built  outhouses,  and  converted  the  cottage  into  a  more 
spacious  dwelling,  in  the  old  Dutch  style  of  architecture, 
with  crow-steps  on  the  gables ;  a  quaint,  picturesque 
building,  with  "  as  many  angles  and  corners,"  to  use  his 
own  words,  "as  a  cocked  hat."  He  caused  creeping 
plants  and  climbing  roses  to  be  trained  up  its  walls ;  the 
trees  he  planted  prospered  in  that  sheltered  situation, 
and  were  filled  with  birds,  which  would  not  leave  their 
nests  at  the  approach  of  the  kind  master  of  the  place. 
The  house  became  almost  hidden  from  sight  by  their 
lofty  summits,  the  perpetual  rustlings  of  which,  to  those 
who  sat  within,  were  blended  with  the  murmurs  of  the 
water.  Yan  Tassel  would  have  had  some  difficulty  in 
recognizing  his  old  abode  in  this  little  paradise,  with  the 
beauty  of  which  one  of  Irving's  friends  *  has  made  the 
public  familiar  in  prose  and  verse. 

At  Sunnyside,  Irving  wrote  his  "  Life  of  Oliver  Gold 
smith."  Putnam,  the  bookseller,  had  said  to  him  one 
day  :  "  Here  is  Foster's  '  Life  of  Goldsmith  ; '  I  think  of 

*H.  T.  Tuckerman. 


116  WASHINGTON  IRVING, 

republishing  it."  "  I  once  wrote  a  Memoir  of  Goldsmith," 
answered  Irving,  "  which  was  prefixed  to  an  edition  of  his 
works  printed  at  Paris  ;  and  I  have  thought  of  enlarging 
it  and  making  it  more  perfect."  "  If  you  will  do  that," 
was  the  reply  of  the  bookseller,  "  I  shall  not  republish 
the  Life  by  Foster."  Within  three  months  afterwards, 
Irving's  "  Life  of  Goldsmith  "  was  finished  and  in  press. 
It  was  so  much  superior  to  the  original  sketch,  in  the  ex 
actness  of  the  particulars,  the  entertainment  of  the  anec 
dotes,  and  the  beauty  of  the  style,  that  it  was  really  a  new 
work.  For  my  part,  I  know  of  nothing  like  it.  I  have 
read  no  biographical  memoir  which  carries  forward  the 
reader  so  delightfully  and  with  so  little  tediousness  of 
recital  or  reflection.  I  never  take  it  up  without  being 
tempted  to  wish  that  Irving  had  written  more  works  of 
the  kind ;  but  this  could  hardly  be  ;  for  where  could  he 
have  found  another  Goldsmith? 

In  1850  appeared  his  "  Lives  of  Mahomet  and  his  Suc 
cessors,"  composed  principally  from  memoranda  made  by 
him  during  his  residence  in  Spain ;  and  in  the  same  year 
he  completed  the  revisal  of  his  works  for  a  new  edition, 
which  was  brought  out  by  Putnam,  a  bookseller  of  whose 
obliging  and  honorable  conduct  he  delighted  to  speak. 
Irving  was  a  man  with  whom  it  was  not  easy  to  have  a 
misunderstanding ;  but,  even  if  he  had  been  of  a  different 
temper,  these  commendations  would  have  been  none  the 
less  deserved. 

When  Cooper  died,  toward  the  close  of  the  year  1850, 


WILLIAM  CTTLLEN  BRYANT.  H7 

Irving,  who  had  not  long  before  met  him,  apparently  in 
the  full  vigor  of  his  excellent  constitution,  was  much 
shocked  by  the  event,  and  took  part  in  the  meetings  held 
for  the  purpose  of  collecting  funds  to  erect  a  monument 
to  his  memory  in  this  city — a  design  which,  I  am  sorry  to 
say,  has  wholly  failed.  He  wrote  a  letter  advising  that 
the  monument  should  be  a  statue,  and  attended  the  great 
memorial  meeting  held  in  Metropolitan  Hall,  in  February 
of  the  next  year,  at  which  Webster  presided.  He  was 
then  near  the  end  of  his  sixty-eighth  year,  and  was  re 
marked  as  one  over  whom  the  last  twenty  years  had 
passed  lightly.  He,  whom  Dr.  Francis  describes  as  in 
early  life  a  slender  and  delicate  youth,  preserving  his 
health  by  habitual  daily  exercise,  appeared  before  that 
vast  assembly  a  fresh,  well-preserved  gentleman  scarcely 
more  than  elderly,  with  firm  but  benevolent  features, 
well-knit  and  muscular  limbs,  and  an  elastic  step,  the 
sign  of  undiminished  physical  vigor. 

In  his  retirement  at  Sunnyside,  Irving  planned  and  ex 
ecuted  his  last  great  work,  the  "Life  of  Washington,"  to 
which  he  says  he  had  long  looked  forward  as  his  crown 
ing  literary  effort.  Constable,  the  Edinburgh  bookseller, 
had  proposed  it  to  him  thirty  years  before,  and  he  then 
resolved  to  undertake  it  as  soon  as  he  should  return  to 
the  United  States.  It  was  postponed  in  favor  of  other 
projects,  but  never  abandoned.  At  length  the  expected 
time  seemed  to  have  arrived ;  his  other  tasks  had  been 
successfully  performed ;  the  world  was  waiting  for  new 


118  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

•works  from  his  pen ;  his  mind  and  body  were  yet  in  their 
vigor ;  the  habit  and  the  love  of  literary  production  yet 
remained,  and  he  addressed  himself  to  this  greatest  of  his 
labors. 

Yet  he  had  his  misgivings,  though  they  could  not  di 
vert  him  from  his  purpose.  "  They  expect  too  much — 
too  much,"  he  said  to  a  friend  of  mine,  to  whom  he  was 
speaking  of  the  magnitude  of  the  task  and  the  difficulty 
of  satisfying  the  public.  "We  cannot  wonder  at  these 
doubts.  At  the  time  when  he  began  to  employ  himself 
steadily  on  this  work,  he  was  near  the  age  of  threescore 
and  ten,  when  with  most  men  the  season  of  hope  and  con 
fidence  is  past.  He  was  like  one  who  should  begin  the 
great  labor  of  the  day  when  the  sun  was  shedding  his 
latest  beams,  and  what  if  the  shadows  of  night  should 
descend  upon  him  before  his  task  was  ended  ?  A  vast 
labor  had  been  thrown  upon  him  by  the  almost  number 
less  documents  and  papers  recently  brought  to  light  re 
lating  to  the  events  in  which  Washington  was  concerned 
— such  as  were  amassed  and  digested  by  the  research 
of  Sparks,  and  accompanied  by  the  commentary  of  his 
excellent  biography.  These  were  all  to  be  carefully  ex 
amined  and  their  spirit  extracted.  Historians  had  in  the 
meantime  arisen  in  our  country,  of  a  world-wide  fame, 
with  whose  works  his  own  must  be  compared,  and  he 
was  to  be  judged  by  a  public  whom  he,  more  than  almost 
any  other  man,  had  taught  to  be  impatient  of  mediocrity. 

I  do  not  believe,  however,  that  Irving's  task  would  have 


WILLIAM  GULLEN  BRYANT.  H9 

been  performed  so  ably  if  it  had  been  undertaken  when 
it  was  suggested  by  Constable;  the  narrative  could  not 
have  been  so  complete  in  its  facts ;  it  might  not  have  been 
written  with  the  same  becoming  simplicity.  It  was 
fortunate  that  the  work  was  delayed  till  it  could  be 
written  from  the  largest  store  of  materials,  till  its  plan 
was  fully  matured  in  all  its  fair  proportions,  and  till 
the  author's  mind  had  become  filled  with  the  profound- 
est  veneration  for  his  subject. 

The  simplicity  already  mentioned  is  the  first  quality  of 
this  work  which  impresses  the  reader.  Here  is  a  man  of 
genius,  a  poet  by  temperament,  writing  the  life  of  a  man 
of  transcendent  wisdom  and  virtue — a  life  passed  amidst 
great  events,  and  marked  by  inestimable  public  services. 
There  is  a  constant  temptation  to  eulogy,  but  the  tempta 
tion  is  resisted  ;  the  actions  of  his  hero  are  left  to  speak 
their  own  praise.  He  records  events  reverently,  as  one 
might  have  recorded  them  before  the  art  of  rhetoric  was 
invented,  with  no  exaggeration,  with  no  parade  of  reflec 
tion  ;  the  lessons  of  the  narrative  are  made  to  impress 
themselves  on  the  mind  by  the  earnest  and  conscientious 
relation  of  facts.  Meantime  the  narrator  keeps  himself 
in  the  background,  solely  occupied  with  the  due  presen 
tation  of  his  subject.  Our  eyes  are  upon  the  actors 
whom  he  sets  before  us — we  never  think  of  Mr.  Irving. 

A  closer  examination  reveals  another  great  merit  of 
the  work,  the  admirable  proportion  in  which  the  author 
keeps  the  characters  and  events  of  his  story.  I  suppose 


120  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

he  could  hardly  have  been  conscious  of  this  merit,  and 
that  it  was  attained  without  a  direct  effort.  Long  medi 
tation  had  probably  so  shaped  and  matured  the  plan  in 
his  mind,  and  so  arranged  its  parts  in  their  just  symme 
try,  that,  executing  it  as  he  did,  conscientiously,  he  could 
not  have  made  it  a  different  thing  from  what  we  have  it. 
There  is  nothing  distorted,  nothing  placed  in  too  broad  a 
light  or  thrown  too  far  in  the  shade.  The  incidents  of 
our  Revolutionary  war,  the  great  event  of  Washington's 
life,  pass  before  us  as  they  passed  before  the  eyes  of  the 
commander-in-chief  himself,  and  from  time  to  time  varied 
his  designs.  Washington  is  kept  always  in  sight,  and 
the  office  of  the  biographer  is  never  allowed  to  become 
merged  in  that  of  the  historian. 

The  men  who  were  the  companions  of  Washington  in 
the  field  or  in  civil  life,  are  shown  only  in  their  associa 
tion  with  him,  yet  are  their  characters  drawn,  not  only 
with  skill  and  spirit,  but  with  a  hand  that  delighted  to 
do  them  justice.  Nothing,  I  believe,  could  be  more  ab 
horrent  to  Irving's  ideas  of  the  province  of  a  biographer, 
than  the  slightest  detraction  from  the  merits  of  others, 
that  his  hero  might  appear  the  more  eminent.  So  remark 
able  is  his  work  in  this  respect,  that  an  accomplished 
member  of  the  Historical  Society,*  who  has  analyzed  the 
merits  of  the  "  Life  of  Washington  "  with  a  critical  skill 
which  makes  me  ashamed  to  speak  of  the  work  after  him, 

*  G-.  "W.  Greene.     "  Biographical  Studies." 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  121 

has  declared  that  no  writer,  within  the  circle  of  his  read 
ing,  "  has  so  successfully  established  his  claim  to  the  rare 
and  difficult  virtue  of  impartiality." 

I  confess,  my  admiration  of  this  work  becomes  the 
greater  the  more  I  examine  it.  In  the  other  writings  of 
Irving  are  beauties  which  strike  the  reader  at  once.  In 
this  I  recognize  qualities  which  lie  deeper,  and  which  I 
was  not  sure  of  finding — a  rare  equity  of  judgment,  a  large 
grasp  of  the  subject,  a  profound  philosophy,  independent 
of  philosophical  forms,  and  even  instinctively  rejecting 
them,  the  power  of  reducing  an  immense  crowd  of  loose 
materials  to  clear  and  orderly  arrangement,  and  forming 
them  into  one  grand  whole,  as  a  skilful  commander,  from 
a  rabble  of  raw  recruits,  forms  a  disciplined  army,  ani 
mated  and  moved  by  a  single  will. 

The  greater  part  of  this  last  work  of  Irving  was  com 
posed  while  he  was  in  the  enjoyment  of  what  might  be 
called  a  happy  old  age.  This  period  of  his  life  was  not 
without  its  infirmities,  but  his  frame  was  yet  unwasted, 
his  intellect  bright  and  active,  and  the  hour  of  decay 
seemed  distant.  He  had  become  more  than  ever  the  ob 
ject  of  public  veneration,  and  in  his  beautiful  retreat  en 
joyed  all  the  advantages  with  few  of  the  molestations  of 
acknowledged  greatness ;  a  little  too  much  visited,  per 
haps,  but  submitting  to  the  intrusion  of  his  admirers 
with  his  characteristic  patience  and  kindness.  That  re 
treat  had  now  become  more  charming  than  ever,  and  the 
domestic  life  within  was  as  beautiful  as  the  nature  with- 


122  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

out.  A  surviving  brother,  older  than  himself,  shared  it 
with  him,  and  several  affectionate  nephews  and  nieces 
stood  to  him  in  the  relation  of  sons  and  daughters.  He 
was  surrounded  by  neighbors  who  saw  him  daily,  and 
honored  and  loved  him  the  more  for  knowing  him  so  well. 

"While  he  was  engaged  in  writing  the  last  pages  of  his 
"  Life  of  Washington,"  his  countrymen  heard  with  pain 
that  his  health  was  failing  and  his  strength  ebbing  away. 
He  completed  the  work,  however,  though  he  was  not 
able  to  revise  the  last  sheets,  and  we  then  heard  that  his 
nights  had  become  altogether  sleepless.  He  was  himself 
of  opinion  that  his  labors  had  been  too  severe  for  his 
time  of  life,  and  had  sometimes  feared  that  the  power  to 
continue  them  would  desert  him  before  his  work  could 
be  finished.  A  catarrh  to  which  he  had  been  subject,  had, 
by  some  injudicious  prescription,  been  converted  into  an 
asthma,  and  the  asthma,  according  to  the  testimony  of 
his  physician,  Dr.  Peters,  one  of  the  most  attentive  and 
assiduous  of  his  profession,  was  at  length  accompanied 
by  an  enlargement  of  the  heart.  This  disease  ended  in 
the  usual  way  by  a  sudden  dissolution.  On  the  28th  of 
November  last,  in  the  evening,  he  had  bidden  the  family 
good  night  in  his  usual  kind  manner,  and  had  withdrawn 
to  his  room,  attended  by  one  of  his  nieces  carrying  his 
medicines,  when  he  complained  of  a  sudden  feeling  of  in 
tense  sadness,  sank  immediately  into  her  arms,  and  died 
without  a  struggle. 

Although  he  had  reached  an  age  beyond  which  life  is 


WILLIAM  CULLEJV  BRYANT.  123 

rarely  prolonged,  the  news  of  his  death  was  everywhere 
received  with  profound  sorrow.  The  whole  country 
mourned,  but  the  grief  was  most  deeply  felt  in  his  im 
mediate  neighborhood;  the  little  children  wept  for  the 
loss  of  their  good  friend.  When  the  day  of  his  funeral 
arrived,  the  people  gathered  from  far  and  near  to  attend 
it;  this  capital  poured  forth  its  citizens;  the  trains  on 
the  railway  were  crowded,  and  a  multitude,  like  a  mass 
meeting,  but  reverentially  silent,  moved  through  the 
streets  of  the  neighboring  village,  which  had  been 
dressed  in  the  emblems  of  mourning,  and  clustered  about 
the  church  and  the  burial-ground.  It  was  the  first  day 
of  December ;  the  pleasant  Indian  summer  of  our  climate 
had  been  prolonged  far  beyond  its  usual  date ;  the  sun 
shone  with  his  softest  splendor  and  the  elements  were 
hushed  into  a  perfect  calm  ;  it  was  like  one  of  the  bland 
est  days  of  October.  The  hills  and  forests,  the  meadows 
and  waters  which  Irving  had  loved  seemed  listening,  in 
that  quiet  atmosphere,  as  the  solemn  funeral  service  was 
read. 

It  was  read  over  the  remains  of  one  whose  life  had 
well  prepared  his  spirit  for  its  new  stage  of  being.  Ir 
ving  did  not  aspire  to  be  a  theologian,  but  his  heart  was 
deeply  penetrated  with  the  better  part  of  religion,  and  he 
had  sought  humbly  to  imitate  the  example  of  the  Great 
Teacher  of  our  faith. 

That  amiable  character  which  makes  itself  so  manifest 
in  the  writings  of  Irving  was  seen  in  all  his  daily  actions. 


124  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

He  was  ever  ready  to  do  kind  offices,  tender  of  the  feel 
ings  of  others,  carefully  just,  but  ever  leaning  to  the  mer 
ciful  side  of  justice,  averse  from  strife,  and  so  modest  that 
the  world  never  ceased  to  wonder  how  it  should  have 
happened  that  one  so  much  praised  should  have  gained 
so  little  assurance.  He  envied  no  man's  success,  he 
sought  to  detract  from  no  man's  merits,  but  he  was  acute 
ly  sensitive  both  to  praise  and  to  blame — sensitive  to 
such  a  degree  that  an  unfavorable  criticism  of  any  of  his 
works  would  almost  persuade  him  that  they  were  as 
worthless  as  the  critic  represented  them.  He  thought  so 
little  of  himself  that  he  could  never  comprehend  why  it 
was  that  he  should  be  the  object  of  curiosity  or  rever 
ence. 

From  the  time  that  he  began  the  composition  of  his 
"  Sketch-Book,"  his  whole  life  was  the  life  of  an  author. 
His  habits  of  composition  were,  however,  by  no  means 
regular.  "When  he  was  in  the  vein,  the  periods  would 
literally  stream  from  his  pen ;  at  other  times  he  would 
scarcely  write  anything.  For  two  years  after  the  failure 
of  his  brothers  at  Liverpool,  he  found  it  almost  impos 
sible  to  write  a  line.  He  was  throughout  life  an  early 
riser,  and  when  in  the  mood,  would  write  all  the  morning 
and  till  late  in  the  day,  wholly  engrossed  with  his  sub 
ject.  In  the  evening  he  was  ready  for  any  cheerful  pas 
time,  in  which  he  took  part  with  an  animation  almost 
amounting  to  high  spirits.  These  intervals  of  excitement 
and  intense  labor,  sometimes  lasting  for  weeks,  were  sue- 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  125 

ceeded  by  languor,  and  at  times  by  depression  of  spirits, 
and  for  months  the  pen  would  lie  untouched ;  even  to 
answer  a  letter  at  these  times  was  an  irksome  task. 

In  the  evening  he  wrote  but  very  rarely,  knowing — so, 
at  least,  I  infer — that  no  habit  makes  severer  demands 
upon  the  nervous  system  than  this.  It  was  owing,  I 
doubt  not,  to  this  prudent  husbanding  of  his  powers, 
along  with  his  somewhat  abstinent  habits  and  the  exer 
cise  which  he  took  every  day,  that  he  was  able  to  pre 
serve  unimpaired  to  so  late  a  period  the  faculties  em 
ployed  in  original  composition.  He  had  been  a  vigorous 
walker  and  a  fearless  rider,  and  in  his  declining  years  he 
drove  out  daily,  not  only  for  the  sake  of  the  open  air  and 
motion,  but  to  refresh  his  mind  with  the  aspect  of  nature. 
One  of  his  favorite  recreations  was  listening  to  music,  of 
which  he  was  an  indulgent  critic,  and  he  contrived  to  be 
pleased  and  soothed  by  strains  less  artfully  modulated 
than  fastidious  ears  are  apt  to  require. 

His  facility  in  writing  and  the  charm  of  his  style  were 
owing  to  very  early  practice,  the  reading  of  good  authors 
and  the  native  elegance  of  his  mind,  and  not,  in  my  opin 
ion,  to  any  special  study  of  the  graces  of  manner  or  any 
anxious  care  in  the  use  of  terms  and  phrases.  Words 
and  combinations  of  words  are  sometimes  found  in  his 
writings  to  which  a  fastidious  taste  might  object;  but 
these  do  not  prevent  his  style  from  being  one  of  the  most 
agreeable  in  the  whole  range  of  our  literature.  It  is 
transparent  as  the  light,  sweetly  modulated,  unaffected, 


126  WASHINGTON  IR  VING. 

the  native  expression  of  a  fertile  fancy,  a  benignant  tem 
per,  and  a  mind  which,  delighting  in  the  noble  and  the 
beautiful,  turned  involuntarily  away  from  their  oppo- 
sites.  His  peculiar  humor  was,  in  a  great  measure,  the 
offspring  of  this  constitution  of  his  mind.  This  "  fanciful 
playing  with  common  things,"  as  Mr.  Dana  calls  it,  is 
never  coarse,  never  tainted  with  grossness,  and  always  in 
harmony  with  our  better  sympathies.  It  not  only  tinged 
his  writings,  but  overflowed  in  his  delightful  conversa 
tion. 

I  have  thus  set  before  you,  my  friends,  with  such  mea 
sure  of  ability  as  I  possess,  a  rapid  and  imperfect  sketch 
of  the  life,  character,  and  genius  of  Washington  Irving. 
Other  hands  will  yet  give  the  world  a  bolder,  more  vivid, 
and  more  exact  portraiture.  In  the  meantime,  when  I 
consider  for  how  many  years  he  stood  before  the  world 
as  an  author,  with  a  still-increasing  fame — half  a  century 
in  this  most  changeful  of  centuries — I  cannot  hesitate  to 
predict  for  him  a  deathless  renown.  Since  he  began  to 
write,  empires  have  risen  and  passed  away ;  mighty 
captains  have  appeared  on  the  stage  of  the  world,  per 
formed  their  part,  and  been  called  to  their  account ;  wars 
have  been  fought  and  ended,  which  have  changed  the  des 
tinies  of  the  human  race.  New  arts  have  been  invented 
and  adopted,  and  have  pushed  the  old  out  of  use;  the 
household  economy  of  half  mankind  has  undergone  a 
revolution.  Science  has  learned  a  new  dialect  and  for 
gotten  the  old ;  the  chemist  of  1807  would  be  a  vain 


WILLIAM  CULLEF  BRYANT.  127 

babbler  among  his  brethren  of  the  present  day,  and 
would  in  turn  become  bewildered  in  the  attempt  to  un 
derstand  them.  Nation  utters  speech  to  nation  in  words 
that  pass  from  realm  to  realm  with  the  speed  of  light. 
Distant  countries  have  been  made  neighbors  ;  the  Atlan 
tic  Ocean  has  become  a  narrow  frith,  and  the  Old  World 
and  the  New  shake  hands  across  it ;  the  East  and  the 
West  look  in  at  each  other's  windows.  The  new  inven 
tions  bring  new  calamities,  and  men  perish  in  crowds  by 
the  recoil  of  their  own  devices.  War  has  learned  more 
frightful  modes  of  havoc,  and  armed  himself  with  dead 
lier  weapons  ;  armies  are  borne  to  the  battle-field  on  the 
wings  of  the  wind,  and  dashed  against  each  other  and 
destroyed  with  infinite  bloodshed.  We  grow  giddy  with 
this  perpetual  whirl  of  strange  events,  these  rapid  and 
ceaseless  mutations ;  the  earth  seems  to  reel  under  our 
feet,  and  we  turn  to  those  who  write  like  Irving,  for  some 
assurance  that  we  are  still  in  the  same  world  into  which 
we  were  born ;  we  read,  and  are  quieted  and  consoled. 
In  his  pages  we  see  that  the  language  of  the  heart  never 
becomes  obsolete  ;  that  Truth  and  Good  and  Beauty,  the 
offspring  of  God,  are  not  subject  to  the  changes  which 
beset  the  inventions  of  men.  We  become  satisfied  that 
he  whose  works  were  the  delight  of  our  fathers,  and  are 
still  ours,  will  be  read  with  the  same  pleasure  by  those 
who  come  after  us. 

If  it  were  becoming,  at  this  time  and  in  this  assembly, 
to  address  our  departed  friend  as  if  in  his  immediate 


128  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

presence,  I  would  say  :  "  Farewell,  them  who  hast  entered 
into  the  rest  prepared,  from  the  foundation  of  the  world, 
for  serene  and  gentle  spirits  like  thine.  Farewell,  happy 
in  thy  life,  happy  in  thy  death,  happier  in  the  reward  to 
which  that  death  was  the  assured  passage  ;  fortunate  in 
attracting  the  admiration  of  the  world  to  thy  beautiful 
writings ;  still  more  fortunate  in  having  written  nothing 
which  did  not  tend  to  promote  the  reign  of  magnanimous 
forbearance  and  generous  sympathies  among  thy  fellow- 
men.  The  brightness  of  that  enduring  fame  which  thou 
hast  won  on  earth  is  but  a  shadowy  symbol  of  the  glory 
to  which  thou  art  admitted  in  the  world  beyond  the 
grave.  Thy  errand  upon  earth  was  an  errand  of  peace 
and  good-will  to  men,  and  thou  art  now  in  a  region  where 
hatred  and  strife  never  enter,  and  where  the  harmonious 
activity  of  those  who  inhabit  it  acknowledges  no  impulse 
less  noble  or  less  pure  than  that  of  love." 


RECOLLECTIONS   OF   IRVING. 


BY  HIS  PUBLISHER. 


EECOLLECTIONS    OP    IRVING-. 


BY  HIS  PUBLISHER. 


OU  are  aware  that  one  of  the  most  interesting 
reunions  of  men  connected  with  literary  pur 
suits  in  England  is  at  the  annual  dinner  of  the 
"  Literary  Fund," — the  management  of  which  has  been 
so  often  dissected  of  late  by  Dickens  and  others.  It  is  a 
fund  for  disabled  authors;  and,  like  most  other  British 
charities,  requires  to  be  fed  annually  by  a  public  dinner. 
A  notable  occasion  of  this  kind  happened  on  the  llth  of 
May,  1842.  It  was  at  this  that  I  first  met  Mr.  Irving  in  Eu 
rope.  The  president  of  the  festival  was  no  less  than  the 
Queen's  young  husband,  Prince  Albert, — his  first  appear 
ance  in  that  (presidential)  capacity.  His  three  speeches 
were  more  than  respectable,  for  a  prince ;  they  were  ^posi 
tive  success.  In  the  course  of  the  evening  we  had  speeches 
by  Hallam  and  Lord  Mahon  for  the  historians  ;  Campbell 
and  Moore  for  the  poets  ;  Talfourd  for  the  dramatists  and 
the  bar  ;  Sir  Eoderick  Murchison  for  the  savans ;  Cheva 
lier  Bunsen  and  Baron  Brunow  for  the  diplomatists ;  G. 
P.  E.  James  for  the  novelists ;  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester ; 
Gaily  Knight,  the  antiquary ;  and  a  goodly  sprinkling  of 

131 


132  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

peers,  not  famed  as  authors.  Edward  Everett  was  present 
as  American  Minister ;  and  Washington  Irving  (then  on 
his  way  to  Madrid  in  diplomatic  capacity)  represented 
American  authors.  Such  an  array  of  speakers  in  a  single 
evening  is  rare  indeed,  and  it  was  an  occasion  long  to  be 
remembered. 

The  toasts  and  speeches  were,  of  course,  very  precisely 
arranged  beforehand,  as  etiquette  requires,  I  suppose,  be 
ing  in  the  presence  of  "  His  Royal  Highness,"  yet  most 
of  them  were  animated  and  characteristic.  When  "  Wash 
ington  Irving  and  American  Literature  "  was  propounded 
by  the  fugleman  at  the  elbow  of  H.  R.  H.,  the  cheering 
was  vociferously  hearty  and  cordial,  and  the  interest  and 
curiosity  to  see  and  hear  Geoffrey  Crayon  seemed  to  be 
intense.  His  name  appeared  to  touch  the  finest  chords  of 
genial  sympathy  and  good-will.  The  other  famous  men 
of  the  evening  had  been  listened  to  with  respect  and  def 
erence,  but  Mr.  Irving's  name  inspired  genuine  enthusi 
asm.  We  had  been  listening  to  the  learned  Hallam,  and 
the  sparkling  Moore, — to  the  classic  and  fluent  author  of 
"  Ion,"  and  to  the  "  Bard  of  Hope," — to  the  historic  and 
theologic  diplomate  from  Prussia,  and  to  the  stately  rep 
resentative  of  the  Czar.  A  dozen  well-prepared  senti 
ments  had  been  responded  to  in  as  many  different 
speeches.  "  The  Mariners  of  England,"  "  And  doth  not  a 
meeting  like  this  make  amends,"  had  been  sung,  to  the 
evident  satisfaction  of  the  authors  of  those  lyrics — (Camp 
bell,  by  the  way,  who  was  near  my  seat,  had  to  be  "  regu- 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  133 

lated  "  in  his  speech  by  his  friend  and  publisher,  Moxon, 
lest  H.  R.  H.  should  be  scandalized).  And  now  everybody 
was  on  tiptoe  for  the  author  of  "Bracebridge  Hall."  If 
his  speech  had  been  proportioned  to  the  cheers  which 
greeted  him,  it  would  have  been  the  longest  of  the  even 
ing.  When,  therefore,  he  simply  said,  in  his  modest,  be 
seeching  manner,  "I  beg  to  return  you  my  very  sincere 
thanks,"  his  brevity  seemed  almost  ungracious  to  those 
who  didn't  know  that  it  was  physically  impossible  for 
him  to  make  a  speech.  It  was  vexatious  that  routine  had 
omitted  from  the  list  of  speakers  Mr.  Everett,  who  was  at 
Irving's  side';  but,  as  diplomate,  the  Prussian  and  Rus 
sian  had  precedence,  and  as  American  author,  Irving,  of 
course,  was  the  representative  man.  An  Englishman 
near  me  said  to  his  neighbor, — " Brief?"  "Yes,  but  you 
can  tell  the  gentleman  in  the  very  tone  of  his  voice." 

In  the  hat-room  I  was  amused  to  see  "little  Tom 
Moore "  in  the  crowd,  appealing,  with  mock-pathos,  to 
Irving,  as  the  biggest  man,  to  pass  his  ticket,  lest  he 
should  be  demolished  in  the  crush.  They  left  the  hall 
together  to  encounter  a  heavy  shower  ;  and  Moore,  in  his 
"  Diary,"  tells  the  following  further  incident : 

"  The  best  thing  of  the  evening  (as  far  as  I  was  con 
cerned)  occurred  after  the  whole  grand  show  was  over. 
Irving  and  I  came  away  together,  and  we  had  hardly  got 
into  the  street,  when  a  most  pelting  shower  came  on,  and 
cabs  and  umbrellas  were  in  requisition  in  all  directions. 
As  we  were  provided  with  neither,  our  plight  was  becom- 


134:  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

ing  serious,  when  a  common  cad  ran  up  to  me,  and  said, 
— *  Shall  I  get  you  a  cab,  Mr.  Moore  ?  Sure,  a'n't  I  the 
man  that  patronizes  your  Melodies  ? '  He  then  ran  off  in 
search  of  a  vehicle,  while  Irving  and  I  stood  close  up,  like 
a  pair  of  male  caryatides,  under  the  very  narrow  pro 
tection  of  a  hall-door  ledge,  and  thought,  at  last,  that  we 
were  quite  forgotten  by  my  patron.  But  he  came  faith 
fully  back,  and  while  putting  me  into  the  cab  (without 
minding  at  all  the  trifle  I  gave  him  for  his  trouble),  he 
said  confidentially  in  my  ear, — '  Now  mind,  whenever  you 
want  a  cab,  Misthur  Moore,  just  call  for  Tim  Flaherty, 
and  I'm  your  man.' — Now,  this  I  call  fame,  and  of  some 
what  more  agreeable  kind  than  that  of  Dante,  when  the 
women  in  the  street  found  him  out  by  the  marks  of  hell- 
fire  on  his  beard." 

When  I  said  that  Mr.  Irving  could  not  speak  in  public, 
I  had  forgotten  that  he  did  once  get  through  with  a  very 
nice  little  speech  on  such  an  occasion  as  that  just  alluded 
to.  It  was  at  an  entertainment  given  in  1837,  at  the  old 
City  Hotel  in  New  York,  by  the  New  York  booksellers  to 
American  authors.  Many  of  "  the  Trade  "  will  remember 
the  good  things  said  on  that  evening,  and  among  them 
Mr.  Irving's  speech  about  Halleck,  and  about  Rogers  the 
poet,  as  the  "friend  of  American  genius."  At  irfy  re 
quest,  he  afterwards  wrote  out  his  remarks,  which  were 
printed  in  the  papers  of  the  day.  Probably  this  was 
his  last,  if  not  his  best  effort  in  this  line ;  for  the 
Dickens-dinner  remarks  were  not  complete. 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  135 

In  1845,  Mr.  Irving  came  to  London  from  his  post  at 
Madrid,  on  a  short  visit  to  his  friend,  Mr.  McLane,  then 
American  Minister  to  England.  It  was  my  privilege  at 
that  time  to  know  him  more  domestically  than  before. 
It  was  pleasant  to  have  him  at  my  table  at  "  Knicker 
bocker  Cottage."  With  his  permission,  a  quiet  party  of 
four  was  made  up;  the  others  being  Dr.  Beattie,  the 
friend  and  biographer  of  Campbell ;  Samuel  Carter  Hall, 
the  litterateur,  and  editor  of  the  Art  Journal ;  and  William 
Howitt.  Irving  was  much  interested  in  what  Dr.  Beattie 
had  to  tell  about  Campbell,  and  especially  so  in  Carter 
Hall's  stories  of  Moore  and  his  patron,  Lord  Lansdowne. 
Moore,  at  this  time,  was  in  ill  health  and  shut  up  from 
the  world.  I  need  not  attempt  to  quote  the  conversation. 
Irving  had  been  somewhat  intimate  with  Moore  in  for 
mer  days,  and  found  him  doubtless  an  entertaining  and 
lively  companion ;  but  his  replies  to  Hall  about  the 
"  patronage "  of  my  Lord  Lansdowne,  etc.,  indicated 
pretty  clearly  that  he  had  no  sympathy  with  the  small 
traits  and  parasitical  tendencies  of  Moore's  character.  If 
there  was  anything  specially  detestable  to  Irving  and  at 
variance  with  his  very  nature,  it  was  that  self-seeking 
deference  to  wealth  and  station  which  was  so  character 
istic  of  the  Irish  poet. 

I  had  hinted  to  one  of  my  guests  that  Mr.  Irving  was 
sometimes  caught  "  napping  "  even  at  the  dinner-table,  so 
that  such  an  event  should  not  occasion  surprise.  The 
conversation  proved  so  interesting  that  I  had  almost 


136  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

claimed  a  victory,  when,  lo !  a  slight  lull  in  the  talk  dis 
closed  the  fact  that  our  respected  guest  was  nodding.  I 
believe  it  was  a  habit  with  him,  for  many  years,  thus  to 
take  "  forty  winks  "  at  the  dinner-table.  Still,  the  con 
versation  of  that  evening  was  a  rich  treat,  and  my  Eng 
lish  friends  frequently  thanked  me  afterwards  for  the  op 
portunity  of  meeting  "  the  man  of  all  others  whom  they 
desired  to  know." 

The  term  of  Mr.  Irving's  contract  with  his  Philadel 
phia  publishers  expired  in  1843,  and,  for  five  years,  his 
works  remained  in  statu  quo,  no  American  publisher  ap 
pearing  to  think  them  of  sufficient  importance  to  propose 
definitely  for  a  new  edition.  Surprising  as  this  fact  ap 
pears  now,  it  is  actually  true  that  Mr.  Irving  began  to 
think  his  works  had  "rusted  out"  and  were  "defunct," 
for  nobody  offered  to  reproduce  them.  Being,  in  1848, 
again  settled  in  New  York,  and  apparently  able  to  render 
suitable  business  attention  to  the  enterprise,  I  ambitious 
ly  proposed  an  arrangement  to  publish  Irving's  Works. 
My  suggestion  was  made  in  a  brief  note,  written  on  the 
impulse  of  the  moment ;  but  (what  was  more  remarkable) 
it  was  promptly  accepted  without  the  change  of  a  single 
figure  or  a  single  stipulation.  It  is  sufficient  to  remark, 
that  the  number  of  volumes  since  printed  of  these  works 
(including  the  later  ones)  amounts  to  about  eight  hun 
dred  thousand. 

The  relations  of  friendship — I  cannot  say  intimacy — to 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  137 

which  this  arrangement  admitted  me  were  such  as  any 
man  might  have  enjoyed  with  proud  satisfaction.  I  had 
always  too  much  earnest  respect  for  Mr.  Irving  ever  to 
claim  familiar  intimacy  with  him.  He  was  a  man  who 
would  unconsciously  and  quietly  command  deferential  re 
gard  and  consideration;  for  in  all  his  ways  and  words 
there  was  the  atmosphere  of  true  refinement.  He  was 
emphatically  a  gentleman,  in  the  best  sense  of  that  word. 
Never  forbidding  or  morose,  he  was  at  times  (indeed  al 
ways,  when  quite  well)  full  of  genial  humor, — sometimes 
overflowing  with  fun.  But  I  need  not,  here  at  least,  at 
tempt  to  sum  up  his  characteristics. 

That  "  Sunny  side  "  home  was  too  inviting  to  those  who 
were  privileged  there  to  allow  any  proper  opportunity  for 
a  visit  to  pass  unimproved.  Indeed,  it  became  so  attrac 
tive  to  strangers  and  lion-hunters,  that  some  of  those 
whose  entree  was  quite  legitimate  and  acceptable  refrained, 
especially  during  the  last  two  years,  from  adding  to  the 
heavy  tax  which  casual  visitors  began  to  levy  upon  the 
quiet  hours  of  the  host.  Ten  years  ago,  when  Mr.  Irving 
was  in  his  best  estate  of  health  and  spirits,  when  his 
mood  was  of  the  sunniest,  and  Wolfert's  Boost  was  in  the 
spring-time  of  its  charms,  it  was  my  fortune  to  pass  a 
few  days  there  with  my  wife.  Mr.  Irving  himself  drove 
a  snug  pair  of  ponies  down  to  the  steamboat  to  meet  us 
— (for,  even  then,  Thackeray's  "one  old  horse"  was  not 
the  only  resource  in  the  Sunnyside  stables).  The  drive 
of  two  miles  from  Tarrytown  to  that  delicious  lane  which 


138  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

leads  to  the  Boost, — who  does  not  know  all  that,  and  how 
charming  it  is  ?  Five  hundred  descriptions  of  the  Tap- 
pan  Zee  and  the  region  round  about  have  not  exhausted 
it.  The  modest  cottage,  almost  buried  under  the  luxuri 
ant  Melrose  ivy,  was  then  just  made  what  it  is, — a  pic 
turesque  and  comfortable  retreat  for  a  man  of  tastes  and 
habits  like  those  of  Geoffrey  Crayon, — snug  and  modest, 
but  yet,  with  all  its  surroundings,  a  fit  residence  for  a 
gentleman  who  had  means  to  make  everything  suitable  as 
well  as  handsome  about  him.  Of  this  a  word  anon. 

I  do  not  presume  to  write  of  the  home-details  of  Sun- 
nyside,  further  than  to  say  that  this  delightful  visit  of 
three  or  four  days  gave  us  the  impression  that  Mr.  Ir- 
ving's  element  seemed  to  be  at  home,  as  head  of  the  fam 
ily.  He  took  us  for  a  stroll  over  the  grounds, — some 
twenty  acres  of  wood  and  dell,  with  babbling  brooks, — 
pointing  out  innumerable  trees  which  he  had  planted 
with  his  own  hands,  and  telling  us  anecdotes  and  remin 
iscences  of  his  early  life  : — of  his  being  taken  in  the  Med 
iterranean  by  pirates; — of  his  standing  on  the  pier  at 
Messina,  in  Sicily,  and  looking  at  Nelson's  fleet  sweeping 
by  on  its  way  to  the  battle  of  Trafalgar ; — of  his  failure 
to  see  the  interior  of  Milan  Cathedral,  because  it  was  be 
ing  decorated  for  the  coronation  of  the  first  Napoleon ; — 
of  his  adventures  in  Rome  with  Allston,  and  how  near 
Geoffrey  Crayon  came  to  being  an  artist ; — of  Talleyrand, 
and  many  other  celebrities  ; — and  of  incidents  which 
seemed  to  take  us  back  to  a  former  generation.  Often  at 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  139 

this  and  subsequent  visits  I  ventured  to  suggest  (not 
professionally),  after  some  of  these  reminiscences,  "I 
hope  you  have  taken  time  to  make  a  note  of  these ; " 
but  the  oracle  nodded  a  sort  of  humorous  No.  A  drive  to 
Sleepy  Hollow — Mr.  Irving  again  managing  the  ponies 
himself — crowned  our  visit ;  and  with  such  a  coachman 
and  guide,  in  such  regions,  we  were  not  altogether  unable 
to  appreciate  the  excursion. 

You  are  aware  that  in  "  Knickerbocker,"  especially,  Mr. 
Irving  made  copious  revisions  and  additions,  when  the 
new  edition  was  published  in  1848.  The  original  edition 
(1809)  was  dedicated  with  mock  gravity  to  the  New  York 
Historical  Society ;  and  the  preface  to  the  revision  ex 
plains  the  origin  and  intent  of  the  work.  Probably  some 
of  the  more  literal-minded  grandsons  of  Holland  were 
somewhat  unappreciative  of  the  precise  scope  of  the 
author's  genius  and  the  bent  of  his  humor ;  but  if  this 
"  veritable  history  "  really  elicited  any  "  doubts  "  or  any 
hostility,  at  the  time,  such  misapprehension  has  doubt 
less  been  long  since  removed.  It  has  often  been  re 
marked  that  Diedrich  Knickerbocker  had  really  enlisted 
more  practical  interest  in  the  early  annals  of  his  native 
State  than  all  other  historians  together,  down  to  his  time. 
But  for  him  we  might  never  have  had  an  O'Callaghan  or 
a  Brodhead. 

The  "Sketch-Book"  also  received  considerable  new 
matter  in  the  revised  edition ;  and  the  story,  in  the  pre- 


140  WASHINGTON  IR  VING. 

face,  of  the  author's  connection  with  Scott  and  with  Mur 
ray  added  new  interest  to  the  volume,  which  has  always 
been  the  favorite  with  the  public.  You  will  remember 
Mr.  Bryant's  remark  about  the  change  in  the  tone  of  Mr. 
Irving's  temperament  shown  in  this  work  as  contrasted 
with  Knickerbocker,  and  the  probable  cause  of  this 
change.  Mr.  Bryant's  very  delicate  and  judicious  refer 
ence  to  the  fact  of  Mr.  Irving's  early  engagement  was  un 
doubtedly  correct.  A  miniature  of  a  young  lady,  intel 
lectual,  refined,  and  beautiful,  was  handed  me  one  day  by 
Mr.  Irving,  with  the  request  that  I  would  have  a  slight 
injury  repaired  by  an  artist  and  a  new  case  made  for  it, 
the  old  one  being  actually  worn  out  by  much  use.  The 
painting  (on  ivory)  was  exquisitely  fine.  When  I  re 
turned  it  to  him  in  a  suitable  velvet  case,  he  took  it  to  a 
quiet  corner  and  looked  intently  on  the  face  for  some 
minutes,  apparently  unobserved,  his  tears  falling  freely 
on  the  glass  as  he  gazed.  That  this  was  a  miniature  of 
the  lady — Miss  Hoffman,  a  sister  of  Ogden  Hoffman — it 
is  not  now  perhaps  indelicate  to  surmise.  It  is  for  a 
poet  to  characterize  the  nature  of  an  attachment  so  loyal, 
so  fresh,  and  so  fragrant,  forty  years  after  death  had 
snatched  away  the  mortal  part  of  the  object  of  affection. 

During  one  of  his  visits  to  the  city,  Mr.  Irving  sud 
denly  asked  if  I  could  give  him  a  bed  at  my  house  at 
Staten  Island.  I  could.  So  we  had  a  nice  chatty  even 
ing,  and  the  next  morning  we  took  him  on  a  charming 
drive  over  the  hills  of  Staten  Island.  He  seemed  to 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM. 

enjoy  it  highly,  for  lie  had  not  been  there,  I  believe,  since 
he  was  stationed  there  in  a  military  capacity,  during  the 
War  of  1812,  as  aid  of  Governor  Tompkins.  He  gave  us 
a  humorous  account  of  some  of  his  equestrian  perform 
ances,  and  those  of  the  Governor,  while  on  duty  at  the 
island ;  but  neither  his  valor  nor  the  Governor's  was 
tested  by  any  actual  contact  with  the  enemy. 

In  facility  of  composition,  Mr.  Irving,  I  believe,  was 
peculiarly  influenced  by  "moods."  When  in  his  usual 
good  health,  and  the  spirit  was  on  him,  he  wrote  very 
rapidly ;  but  at  other  times  composition  was  an  irksome 
task,  or  even  an  impossible  one.  Dr.  Peters  says,  he 
frequently  rose  from  his  bed  in  the  night  and  wrote  for 
hours  together.  Then  again  he  would  not  touch  his  pen 
for  weeks.  I  believe  his  most  rapidly  written  work  was 
the  one  often  pronounced  his  most  spirited  one,  and  a 
model  as  a  biography,  the  "Life  of  Goldsmith."  Sitting 
at  my  desk  one  day,  he  was  looking  at  Forster's  clever 
work,  which  I  proposed  to  reprint.  He  remarked  that 
it  was  a  favorite  theme  of  his,  and  he  had  half  a  mind  to 
pursue  it,  and  extend  into  a  volume  a  sketch  he  had  once 
made  for  an  edition  of  Goldsmith's  Works.  I  expressed 
a  hope  that  he  would  do  so,  and  within  sixty  days  the 
first  sheets  of  Irving's  "  Goldsmith  "  were  in  the  printer's 
hands.  The  press  (as  he  says)  was  "dogging  at  his 
heels,"  for  in  two  or  three  weeks  the  volume  was  published. 

Yisiting  London  shortly  after  the  "  Life  of  Mahomet " 
was  prepared  for  the  press,  I  arranged  with  Mr.  Murray, 


142  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

on  the  author's  behalf,  for  an  English  edition  of  "  Ma 
homet,"  "Goldsmith,"  etc.,  and  took  a  request  from 
Mr.  Irving  to  his  old  friend  Leslie,  that  he  would  make  a 
true  sketch  of  the  venerable  Diedrich  Knickerbocker. 
Mr.  Irving  insisted  that  the  great  historian  of  the  Man- 
hattoes  was  not  the  vulgar  old  fellow  they  would  keep 
putting  on  the  omnibuses  and  ice-carts ;  but  that,  though 
quaint  and  old-fashioned,  he  was  still  of  gentle  blood. 
Leslie's  sketches,  however  (he  made  two),  did  not  hit 
the  mark  exactly ;  Mr.  Irving  liked  Parley's  better. 

Among  the  briefer  visits  to  Sunnyside  which  I  had  the 
good-fortune  to  enjoy  was  one  with  the  estimable  compiler 
of  the  "  Dictionary  of  Authors."  Mr.  Irving's  amiable 
and  hospitable  nature  prompted  him  always  to  welcome 
visitors  so  kindly,  that  no  one,  however  dull,  and  however 
uncertain  his  claims,  would  fail  to  be  pleased  with  his  vis 
it.  But  when  the  genial  host  was  in  good  health  and  in 
his  best  moods,  and  the  visitor  had  any  magnetism  in  his 
composition,  when  he  found,  in  short,  a  kindred  spirit, 
his  talk  was  of  the  choicest.  Of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  es 
pecially,  he  would  tell  us  much  that  was  interesting. 
Probably  no  two  writers  ever  appreciated  each  other 
more  heartily  than  Scott  and  Irving.  The  sterling  good 
sense,  and  quiet,  yet  rich  humor  of  Scott,  as  well  as  his 
literary  tastes  and  wonderful  fund  of  legendary  lore, 
would  find  no  more  intelligent  and  discriminating  ad 
mirer  than  Irving ;  while  the  rollicking  fun  of  the  veri- 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  143 

table  Diedrich  and  the  delicate  fancy  and  pathos  of 
Crayon  were  doubtless  unaffectedly  enjoyed  by  the  great 
Scotsman.  I  wish  I  could  tell  you  accurately  one-half  of 
the  anecdotes  which  were  so  pleasantly  related  during 
those  various  brief  visits  at  "  the  cottage ; "  but  I  did  not 
go  there  to  take  notes,  and  it  is  wicked  to  spoil  good 
stories  by  misquotation.  One  story,  however,  I  may  ven 
ture  to  repeat. 

You  remember  how  the  author  of  the  "Pleasures  of 
Hope  "  was  once  hospitably  entertained  by  worthy  peo 
ple,  under  the  supposition  that  he  was  the  excellent 
missionary  Campbell,  just  returned  from  Africa, — and 
how  the  massive  man  of  state,  Daniel  Webster,  had  re 
peated  occasion,  in  England,  to  disclaim  honors  meant 
for  Noah,  the  man  of  words.  Mr.  Irving  told,  with  great 
glee,  a  little  story  against  himself,  illustrating  these  un 
certainties  of  distant  fame.  Making  a  small  purchase  at 
a  shop  in  England,  not  long  after  his  second  or  third 
work  had  given  currency  to  his  name,  he  gave  his  address 
("  Mr.  Irving,  Number,"  etc.,)  for  the  parcel  to  be  sent  to 
his  lodgings.  The  salesman's  face  brightened :  "  Is  it 
possible,"  said  he,  "  that  I  have  the  pleasure  of  serving 
Mr.  Irving  ?  "  The  question,  and  the  manner  of  it,  indi 
cated  profound  respect  and  admiration.  A  modest  and 
smiling  acknowledgment  was  inevitable.  A  few  more  re 
marks  indicated  still  more  deferential  interest  on  the 
part  of  the  man  of  tape;  and  then  another  question, 
about  Mr.  Irving's  "  latest  work,"  revealed  the  pleasant 


14A  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

fact  that  he  was  addressed  as  the  famous  Edward  Irving, 
of  the  Scotch  Church, — the  man  of  divers  tongues.  The 
very  existence  of  the  "  Sketch-Book  "  was  probably  un 
known  to  his  intelligent  admirer.  "All  I  could  do," 
added  Mr.  Crayon,  with  that  rich  twinkle  in  his  eye, — 
"all  I  could  do  was  to  take  my  tail  between  my  legs  and 
slink  away  in  the  smallest  possible  compass." 

A  word  more  about  Mr.  Irving's  manner  of  life.  The 
impression  given  by  Thackeray,  in  his  notice  (genial 
enough,  and  well-meant,  doubtless)  of  Irving's  death,  is 
absurdly  inaccurate.  His  picture  of  the  "  one  old  horse," 
the  plain  little  house,  etc.,  would  lead  one  to  imagine 
Mr.  Irving  a  weak,  good-natured  old  man,  amiably,  but 
parsimoniously,  saving  up  his  pennies  for  his  "eleven 
nieces,"  (!)  and  to  this  end  stinting  himself,  among  other 
ways,  to  "  a  single  glass  of  wine,"  etc.,  etc.  Mr.  Thack 
eray's  notions  of  style  and  state  and  liveried  retinues  are 
probably  not  entirely  un-English,  notwithstanding  he 
wields  so  sharp  a  pen  against  England's  snobs ;  and  he 
may  naturally  have  looked  for  more  display  of  greatness 
at  the  residence  of  an  ex-ambassador.  But  he  could 
scarcely  appreciate  that  simple  dignity  and  solid  comfort, 
that  unobtrusive  fitness,  which  belonged  to  Mr.  Irving's 
home-arrangements.  There  were  no  flunkies  in  gold  and 
scarlet ;  but  there  were  four  or  five  good  horses  in  the 
stable,  and  as  many  suitable  carriages.  Everything  in 
the  cottage  was  peculiarly  and  comfortably  elegant,  with- 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  145 

out  the  least  pretension.  As  to  the  "single  glass  of 
wine,"  Mr.  Irving,  never  a  professed  teetotaller,  was 
always  temperate  on  instinct  both  in  eating  and  drink 
ing  ;  and  in  his  last  two  years  I  believe  he  did  not  taste 
wine  at  all.  In  all  financial  matters,  Mr.  Irving's  provi 
dence  and  preciseness  were  worthy  of  imitation  by  all 
professional  literary  men ;  but  with  exactness  and  punc 
tuality  he  united  a  liberal  disposition  to  make  a  suitable 
use  of  money,  and  to  have  all  around  him  comfortable  and 
appropriate.  Knowing  that  he  could  leave  a  handsome 
independence  for  those  nearest  to  him,  he  had  no  occasion 
for  any  such  anxious  care  as  Mr.  Thackeray  intimates. 

Thackeray  had  been  invited  to  Yonkers,  to  give  his  lec 
ture  on  "  Charity  and  Humor."  At  this  "Ancient  Dorp  " 
he  was  the  guest  of  Cozzens,  and  I  had  the  honor  of 
accompanying  the  greater  and  lesser  humorist  in  a  drive 
to  Sunnyside,  nine  miles.  (This  call  of  an  hour,  by  the 
way,  was  Thackeray's  only  glimpse  of  the  place  he  de 
scribed.)  The  interview  was  in  every  way  interesting. 
Mr.  Irving  produced  a  pair  of  antiquated  spectacles, 
which  had  belonged  to  "Washington,  and  Major  Penden- 
nis  tried  them  on  with  evident  reverence.  The  hour  was 
well  filled  with  rapid,  pleasant  chat;  but  no  profound 
analysis  of  the  characteristics  of  wit  and  humor  was 
elicited  either  from  the  Stout  Gentleman  or  from  Vanity 
Fair.  Mr.  Irving  went  down  to  Yonkers,  to  hear  Thack 
eray's  lecture  in  the  evening,  after  we  had  all  had  a  slice 
of  bear  at  Mr.  Sparrowgrass's,  to  say  nothing  of  sundry 
10 


146  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

other  courses,  with  a  slight  thread  of  conversation  be 
tween.  At  the  lecture,  he  was  so  startled  by  the  eulogis 
tic  presentation  of  the  lecturer  to  the  audience,  by  the 
excellent  chief  of  the  committee,  that  I  believe  he  did 
not  once  nod  during  the  evening.  We  were,  of  course, 
proud  to  have  as  our  guest  for  the  night  such  an  embodi 
ment  of  "  Charity  and  Humor  "  as  Mr.  Thackeray  saw  in 
the  front  bench  before  him,  but  whom  he  considerately 
spared  from  holding  up  as  an  illustration  of  his  subject. 

Charity,  indeed,  practical  "good-will  towards  men," 
was  an  essential  part  of  Mr.  Irving's  Christianity,  and  in 
this  Christian  virtue  he  was  sometimes  severely  tested. 
Nothing  was  more  irksome  to  him  than  to  be  compelled 
to  endure  calls  of  mere  curiosity,  or  to  answer  letters 
either  of  fulsome  eulogy  of  himself,  or  asking  for  his 
eulogy  of  the  MSS.  or  new  work  of  the  correspondent. 
Some  letters  of  that  kind  he  probably  never  did  answer. 
Few  had  any  idea  of  ike  fagging  task  they  imposed  on  the 
distinguished  victim.  He  would  worry  and  fret  over  it 
trebly  in  anticipation,  and  the  actual  task  itself  was  to 
him  probably  ten  times  as  irksome  as  it  would  be  to  most 
others.  Yet  it  would  be  curious  to  know  how  many  let 
ters  of  suggestion  and  encouragement  he  actually  did 
write  in  reply  to  solicitations  from  young  authors  for  his 
criticism  and  advice,  and  his  recommendation,  or,  per 
haps,  his  pecuniary  aid.  Always  disposed  to  find  merit, 
even  where  any  stray  grains  of  the  article  lay  buried  in 
rubbish,  he  would  amiably  say  the  utmost  that  could  just- 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  147 

ly  be  said  in  favor  of  "  struggling  genius."  Sometimes  his 
readiness  to  aid  meritorious  young  authors  into  profitable 
publicity  was  shamefully  abused, — as  in  the  case  of  Mait- 
land,  an  Englishman,  who  deliberately  forged  an  absurd 
ly  distorted  paraphrase  of  a  note  of  Mr.  Irving' s,  besides 
other  disreputable  use  of  the  signature  which  he  had  en 
ticed  from  him  in  answer  to  urgent  appeals.  But  these 
were  among  the  penalties  of  honorable  fame  and  influence 
which  he  might  naturally  expect  to  pay.  The  sunny  as 
pect  on  the  "  even  tenor  of  his  way  "  still  prevailed ;  and 
until  the  hand  of  disease  reached  him  in  the  last  year  of 
his  life,  very  few  probably  enjoyed  a  more  tranquil  and 
unruffled  existence. 

It  became  almost  a  proverb,  that  Mr.  Irving  was  a  near 
ly  solitary  instance  of  a  long  literary  career  (half  a  cen 
tury)  untouched  by  even  a  breath  of  ill-will  or  jealousy 
on  the  part  of  a  brother-author.  The  annals  of  the  genus 
irritdbile  scarcely  show  a  parallel  to  such  a  career.  The 
most  prominent  American  contemporary  of  Mr.  Irving  in 
imaginative  literature,  I  suppose,  was  Fenimore  Cooper, 
— whose  genius  raised  the  American  name  in  Europe 
more  effectively  even  than  Irving' s,  at  least  on  the  Conti 
nent.  Cooper  had  a  right  to  claim  respect  and  admiration, 
if  not  affection,  from  his  countrymen,  for  his  brilliant  crea 
tions  and  his  solid  services  to  American  literature ;  and  he 
knew  it.  But,  as  we  all  know, — for  it  was  patent, — when 
he  returned  from  Europe,  after  sending  his  "  Letter  to  his 
Countrymen,"  and  gave  us  "  Home  as  Found,"  his  recep- 


148  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

tion  was  much  less  marked  with  warmth  and  enthusiasm 
than  Mr.  Irving's  was;  and  while  he  professed  indiffer 
ence  to  all  such  whims  of  popular  regard,  yet  he  evidently 
brooded  a  little  over  the  relative  amount  of  public  atten 
tion  extended  to  his  brother-author.  At  any  rate,  he  per 
sistently  kept  aloof  from  Mr.  Irving  for  many  years ;  and 
not  unfrequently  discoursed,  in  his  rather  authoritative 
manner,  about  the  humbuggery  of  success  in  this  country, 
as  exhibited  in  some  shining  instances  of  popular  and  offi 
cial  favor.  With  great  admiration  for  Cooper,  whose  na 
tional  services  were  never  recognized  as  they  deserved  to 
be,  I  trust  no  injustice  is  involved  in  the  above  sugges 
tion,  which  I  make  somewhat  presumptuously, — especial 
ly  as  Mr.  Irving  more  than  once  spoke  to  me  in  terms  of 
strong  admiration  of  the  works  and  genius  of  Cooper,  and 
regretted  that  the  great  novelist  seemed  to  cherish  some 
unpleasant  feeling  towards  him.  One  day,  some  time  af 
ter  I  had  commenced  a  library  edition  of  Cooper's  best 
works,  and  while  Irving's  were  in  course  of  publication  in 
companionship,  Mr.  Irving  was  sitting  at  my  desk,  with 
his  back  to  the  door,  when  Mr.  Cooper  came  in  (a  little 
bustlingly  as  usual),  and  stood  at  the  office  entrance, 
talking.  Mr.  Irving  did  not  turn  (for  obvious  reasons), 
and  Cooper  did  not  see  him.  Remembering  his  "Mr. 
Sharp,  Mr.  Blunt,— Mr.  Blunt,  Mr.  Sharp,"  I  had  ac 
quired  caution  as  to  introductions  without  mutual  con 
sent  ;  but  with  a  brief  thought  of  how  matters  stood  (they 
had  not  met  for  several  years),  and  a  sort  of  instinct  that 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  14Q 

reduced  the  real  difference  between  the  parties  to  a  base 
less  fabric  of  misapprehension,  I  stoutly  obeyed  the  im 
pulse  of  the  moment,  and  simply  said, — "  Mr.  Cooper, 
here  is  Mr.  Irving."  The  latter  turned, — Cooper  held  out 
his  hand  cordially,  dashed  at  once  into  an  animated  con 
versation,  took  a  chair,  and,  to  my  surprise  and  delight, 
the  two  authors  sat  for  an  hour,  chatting  in  their  best 
manner  about  almost  every  topic  of  the  day  and  some  of 
former  days.  They  parted  with  cordial  good  wishes,  and 
Mr.  Irving  afterwards  frequently  alluded  to  the  incident 
as  being  a  very  great  gratification  to  him.  He  may  have 
recalled  it  with  new  satisfaction,  when,  not  many  months 
afterwards,  he  sat  on  the  platform  at  the  "  Cooper  Com 
memoration,"  and  joined  in  Bryant's  tribute  to  the  genius 
of  the  departed  novelist. 

Mr.  Irving  was  never  a  systematic  collector  of  books, 
and  his  little  library  at  Sunnyside  might  have  disappoint 
ed  those  who  would  expect  to  see  there  rich  shelves  of 
choice  editions,  and  a  full  array  of  all  the  favorite  authors 
among  whom  such  a  writer  would  delight  to  revel.  Some 
rather  antiquated  tomes  in  Spanish, — indifferent  sets  of 
Calderon  and  Cervantes,  and  of  some  modern  French  and 
German  authors, — a  presentation-set  of  Cadell's  "Waver- 
ley,"  as  well  as  that  more  recent  and  elegant  emanation 
from  the  classic  press  of  Houghton, — a  moderate  amount 
of  home-tools  for  the  "Life  of  Washington"  (rarer  m&- 
terials  were  consulted  in  the  town-libraries  and  at  Wash- 


150  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

ington) — and  the  remainder  of  his  books  were  evidently 
a  hap-hazard  collection,  many  coming  from  the  authors, 
with  their  respects,  and  thus  sometimes  costing  the  re 
cipient  their  full  (intrinsic)  value  in  writing  a  letter  of 
acknowledgment. 

The  little  apartment  had,  nevertheless,  become  some 
what  overcrowded,  and  a  suggestion  for  a  general  renova 
tion  and  pruning  seemed  to  be  gladly  accepted, — so  I 
went  up  and  passed  the  night  there  for  that  purpose. 
Mr.  Irving,  in  his  easy-chair  in  the  sitting-room,  after 
dinner,  was  quite  content  to  have  me  range  at  large  in 
the  library  and  to  let  me  discard  all  the  "  lumber  "  as  I 
pleased ;  so  I  turned  out  some  hundred  volumes  of  un- 
classic  superfluity,  and  then  called  him  in  from  his  nap  to 
approve  or  veto  my  proceedings.  As  he  sat  by,  while  I 
rapidly  reported  the  candidates  for  exclusion,  and  he  nod 
ded  assent,  or  as,  here  and  there,  he  would  interpose  with 
"  No,  no,  not  that"  and  an  anecdote  or  reminiscence  would 
come  in  as  a  reason  against  the  dismissal  of  the  book 
in  my  hand,  I  could  not  help  suggesting  the  scene  in  Don 
Quixote's  library,  when  the  priest  and  the  barber  entered 
upon  their  scrutiny  of  its  contents.  Mr.  Irving  seemed 
to  be  highly  amused  with  this  pruning  process,  and 
his  running  commentary  on  my  "  estimates  of  value  "  in 
weighing  his  literary  collections  was  richly  entertaining. 

Observing  that  his  library-table  was  somewhat  anti 
quated  and  inadequate,  I  persuaded  him  to  let  me  make 
him  a  present  of  a  new  one,  with  the  modern  conve- 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  151 

niences  of  drawers  and  snug  corners  for  keeping  his  stray 
papers.  When  I  sent  him  such  a  one,  my  stipulation  for 
the  return  of  the  old  one  as  a  present  to  me  was  pleas 
antly  granted.  This  relic  was  of  no  great  intrinsic  value  ; 
but,  as  he  had  written  on  this  table  many  of  his  later 
works,  including  "Mahomet,"  "Goldsmith,"  ""Wolfert's 
Boost,"  and  "  Washington,"  I  prize  it,  of  course,  as  one 
of  the  most  interesting  mementos  of  Sunnyside. 

As  an  illustration  of  habit,  it  may  be  added,  that,  some 
time  after  the  new  table  had  been  installed,  I  was  sitting 
with  him  in  the  library,  when  he  searched  long  and  fruit 
lessly  for  some  paper  which  had  been  "  so  very  carefully 
stowed  away  in  some  very  safe  drawer "  that  it  was  not 
to  be  found,  and  the  search  ended  in  a  sort  of  half-hu 
morous,  half-earnest  denunciation  of  all  "  modern  conve 
niences  ; "  the  simple  old  table,  with  its  primitive  fa 
cilities,  was,  after  all,  worth  a  dozen  of  these  elegant 
contrivances  for  memory-saving  and  neatness. 

One  rather  curious  characteristic  of  Mr.  Irving  was  ex 
cessive,  unaffected  modesty  and  distrust  of  himself  and 
of  his  own  writings.  Considering  how  many  a  debutant 
in  letters,  not  yet  out  of  his  teens,  is  so  demonstratively 
self-confident  as  to  the  prospective  effect  of  his  genius  on 
an  expecting  and  admiring  world,  it  was  always  remark 
able  to  hear  a  veteran,  whose  fame  for  half  a  century  had 
been  cosmopolitan,  expressing  the  most  timid  doubts  as 
to  his  latest  compositions,  and  fearing  they  were  unequal 


152  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

to  their  position, — so  unwilling,  too,  to  occupy  an  inch  of 
ground  to  which  any  other  writer  might  properly  lay 
claim.  Mr.  Irving  had  planned  and  made  some  progress 
in  a  work  on  the  Conquest  of  Mexico,  when  he  learned  of 
Mr.  Prescott's  intentions,  and  promptly  laid  his  project 
aside.  His  "  Life  of  Washington,"  originating  more  than 
thirty  years  ago,  was  repeatedly  abandoned,  as  the  suc 
cessive  works  of  Mr.  Sparks,  Mr.  Paulding,  and  others, 
appeared ;  and  though  he  was  subsequently  induced  to 
proceed  with  his  long-considered  plan  of  a  more  drama 
tic  and  picturesque  narrative  from  a  new  point  of  view, 
yet  he  was  more  than  once  inclined  to  put  his  MSS.  into 
the  fire,  in  the  apprehension  that  the  subject  had  been 
worn  threadbare  by  the  various  compilations  which  were 
constantly  coming  out.  When  he  ventured  his  first  vol 
ume,  the  cordial  and  appreciative  reception  promptly  ac 
corded  to  it  surprised  as  much  as  it  cheered  and  pleased 
him ;  for  though  he  despised  hollow  flattery,  no  young 
writer  was  more  warmly  sensitive  than  he  to  all  discrim 
inating,  competent,  and  honest  applause  or  criticism. 
When  "  Wolfert's  Boost"  was  published  (I  had  to  entice 
the  papers  of  that  volume  from  his  drawers,  for  I  doubt 
whether  he  would  have  collected  them  himself),  I  saw 
him  affected  actually  to  tears,  on  reading  some  of  the 
hearty  and  well-written  personal  tributes  which  that  vol 
ume  called  forth.  But  though  every  volume  was  received 
in  this  spirit  by  the  press  and  the  public,  he  was  to 
the  last  apprehensive  of  failure,  until  a  reliable  verdict 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  153 

should  again  reassure  him.  The  very  last  volume  of  his 
works  (the  fifth  of  "  Washington  ")  was  thus  timidly  per 
mitted  to  be  launched;  and  I  remember  well  his  ex 
pression  of  relief  and  satisfaction,  when  he  said  that  Mr. 
Bancroft,  Professor  Felton,  and  Mr.  Duyckinck  had  been 
the  first  to  assure  him  the  volume  was  all  that  it  should 
be.  His  task  on  this  volume  had  perhaps  extended  be 
yond  the  period  of  his  robust  health, — it  had  fagged  him, 
— but  he  had  been  spared  to  write  every  line  of  it  with 
his  own  hand,  and  my  own  copy  is  enriched  by  the  auto 
graph  of  his  valedictory. 

To  refer,  however  briefly,  to  Mr.  Irving's  politics  or 
religion,  even  if  I  had  intimate  knowledge  of  both  (which 
assuredly  I  had  not),  would  be,  perhaps,  to  overstep  de 
corous  limits.  It  may,  however,  properly  be  mentioned, 
that,  in  the  face  of  all  inherent  probabilities  as  to  his  com 
fortable  conservatism,  and  his  earnest  instincts  in  favor 
of  fraternal  conciliation  and.  justice  (which  was  as  marked 
a  quality  in  him  as  in  the  great  man  whom  he  so  faith 
fully  portrayed),  in  spite  of  all  the  considerations  urged 
by  timid  gentlemen  of  the  old  school  in  favor  of  Fillmore 
and  the  status  quo,  he  voted  in  1856,  as  he  told  me,  for 
Fremont.  In  speaking  of  the  candidates  then  in  the 
field,  he  said  of  Fremont,  that  his  comparative  youth  and 
inexperience  in  party-politics  were  points  in  his  favor ; 
for  he  thought  the  condition  of  the  country  called  for  a 
man  of  nerve  and  energy,  one  in  his  prime,  and  unfettered 


154  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

by  party-traditions  and  bargains  for  "  the  spoils."  His 
characterization  of  a  more  experienced  functionary,  who 
had  once  served  in  the  State  Department,  was  more  se 
vere  than  I  ever  heard  from  him  of  any  other  person; 
and  severity  from  a  man  of  his  judicious  and  kindly  im 
pulses  had  a  meaning  in  it. 

Favored  once  with  a  quiet  Sunday  at  "the  Cottage,"  of 
course  there  was  a  seat  for  us  all  in  the  family-pew  at 
Christ  Church  in  the  village  (Tarrytown).  Mr.  Irving's 
official  station  as  church-warden  was  indicated  by  the 
ex-ambassador's  meek  and  decorous  presentation  of  the 
plate  for  the  silver  and  copper  offerings4  of  the  parish 
ioners.  At  subsequent  successive  meetings  of  the  Gen 
eral  (State)  Convention  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  (to  which  I  had  been  delegated  from  a  little  par 
ish  on  Staten  Island),  the  names  of  Washington  Irving 
and  Fenimore  Cooper  were  both  recorded, — the  latter 
representing  Christ  Church,  Cooperstown.  Mr.  Irving 
for  several  years  served  in  this  capacity,  and  as  one  of  the 
Missionary  Committee  of  the  Convention.  His  name  was 
naturally  sought  as  honoring  any  organization.  He  was 
the  last  person  to  be  demonstrative  or  conspicuous  either 
as  to  his  faith  or  his  works ;  but  no  disciple  of  Christ, 
perhaps,  felt  more  devoutly  than  he  did  the  reverential 
aspiration  of  "  Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  and  on  earth 
peace,  good-will  towards  men." 

Passing  a  print-window  in  Broadway  one  day,  his  eye 
rested  on  the  beautiful  engraving  of  "Christus  Conso- 


QEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  155 

lator."  He  stopped  and  looked  at  it  intently  for  some 
minutes,  evidently  much  affected  by  the  genuine  inspira 
tion  of  the  artist  in  this  remarkable  representation  of 
the  Saviour  as  the  consoler  of  sorrow-stricken  humanity. 
His  tears  fell  freely.  "Pray,  get  me  that  print,"  said 
he ;  "I  must  have  it  framed  for  my  sitting-room."  When 
he  examined  it  more  closely  and  found  the  artist's  name, 
"It's  by  my  old  friend  Ary  Scheffer ! "  said  he,  remark 
ing  further,  that  he  had  known  Scheffer  intimately,  and 
knew  him  to  be  a  true  artist,  but  had  not  expected  from 
him  anything  so  excellent  as  this.  I  afterwards  sent 
him  the  companion,  "Christus  Bemunerator ; "  and  the 
pair  remained  his  daily  companions  till  the  day  of  his 
death.  To  me,  the  picture  of  Irving,  amid  the  noise  and 
bustle  of  noon  in  Broadway,  shedding  tears  as  he  studied 
that  little  print,  so  feelingly  picturing  human  sorrow  and 
the  source  of  its  alleviation,  has  always  remained  asso 
ciated  with  the  artist  and  his  works.  If  Irving  could 
enjoy  wit  and  humor  and  give  that  enjoyment  to  others, 
no  other  writer  of  books  had  a  heart  more  tenderly  sen 
sitive  than  his  to  the  sufferings  and  ills  which  flesh  is 
heir  to. 

Of  his  later  days, — of  the  calmly  received  premonitions 
of  that  peaceful  end  of  which  only  the  precise  moment 
was  uncertain, — of  his  final  departure,  so  gentle  and  so 
fitting, — of  that  ""Washington-Irving-day,"  so  dreamily, 
blandly  still,  and  almost  fragrant,  December  though  it 


156  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

was,  when  with  those  simple  and  appropriate  obsequies 
his  mortal  remains  were  placed  by  the  side  of  his  broth 
ers  and  sisters  in  the  burial-ground  of  Sleepy  Hollow, 
while  thousands  from  far  and  near  silently  looked  for  the 
last  time  on  his  genial  face  and  mourned  his  loss  as  that 
of  a  personal  friend  and  a  national  benefactor,  yet  could 
hardly  for  Ms  sake  desire  any  more  enviable  translation 
from  mortality, — of  the  many  beautiful  and  eloquent  trib 
utes  of  living  genius  to  the  life  and  character  and  writ 
ings  of  the  departed  author,  —  of  all  these  you  have 
already  an  ample  record.  I  need  not  repeat  or  extend 
it.  If  you  could  have  "  assisted  "  at  the  crowning  "  Com 
memoration,"  on  his  birthday  (April  3d),  at  the  Academy 
of  Music,  you  would  have  found  it  in  many  respects 
memorably  in  accordance  with  the  intrinsic  fitness  of 
things.  An  audience  of  five  thousand,  so  evidently  and 
discriminatingly  intelligent,  addressed  for  two  hours  by 
Bryant,  with  all  his  cool,  judicious,  deliberate  criticism, 
warmed  into  glowing  appreciation  of  the  most  delicate 
and  peculiar  beauties  of  the  character  and  literary  ser 
vices  he  was  to  delineate, — and  this  rich  banquet  fittingly 
desserted  by  the  periods  of  Everett, — such  an  evening  was 
worthy  of  the  subject,  and  worthy  to  be  remembered. 
The  heartiness  and  the  genial  insight  into  Irving's  best 
traits  which  the  poet  displayed  were  peculiarly  gratify 
ing  to  -the  nearer  friends  and  relatives.  His  sketch  and 
analysis,  too,  had  a  remarkable  completeness  for  an  ad 
dress  of  that  kind,  while  its  style  and  manner  were  mod- 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  157 

els  of  chaste  elegance.  Speaking  of  Irving's  contempo 
raries  and  predecessors,  he  warms  into  poetry,  thus  : — 

"We  had  but  one  novelist  before  the  era  of  the 
'  Sketch-Book ; '  their  number  is  now  beyond  enumera 
tion  by  any  but  a  professed  catalogue-maker,  and  many 
of  them  are  read  in  every  cultivated  form  of  human 
speech.  Those  whom  we  acknowledge  as  our  poets — 
one  of  whom  is  the  special  favorite  of  our  brothers  in 
language  who  dwell  beyond  the  sea — appeared  in  the 
world  of  letters  and  won  its  attention  after  Irving  had 
become  famous.  We  have  wits  and  humorists  and  amus 
ing  essayists,  authors  of  some  of  the  airiest  and  most 
graceful  contributions  of  the  present  century,  and  we 
owe  them  to  the  new  impulse  given  to  our  literature  in 
1819.  I  look  abroad  on  these  stars  of  our  literary  firma 
ment,  some  crowded  together  with  their  minute  points 
of  light  in  a  galaxy,  some  standing  apart  in  glorious  con 
stellations  ;  I  recognize  Arcturus  and  Orion  and  Perseus 
and  the  glittering  jewels  of  the  Southern  Crown,  and 
the  Pleiades  shedding  sweet  influences ;  but  the  Evening 
Star,  the  soft  and  serene  light  that  glowed  in  their  van, 
the  precursor  of  them  all,  has  sunk  below  the  horizon. 
The  spheres,  meanwhile,  perform  their  appointed 
courses ;  the  same  motion  which  lifted  them  up  to  the 
mid-sky,  bears  them  onward  to  their  setting ;  and  they, 
too,  like  their  bright  leader,  must  soon  be  carried  by  it 
below  the  earth." 

Let  me  quote  also  Mr.  Bryant's  closing  remarks : — . 


158  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

"  Other  hands  will  yet  give  the  world  a  bolder,  more 
vivid,  and  more  exact  portraiture.  In  the  meantime, 
when  I  consider  for  how  many  years  he  stood  before  the 
world  as  an  author,  with  still  increasing  fame — half  a 
century  in  this  most  changeful  of  centuries — I  cannot 
hesitate  to  predict  for  him  a  deathless  renown.  Since 
he  began  to  write,  empires  have  arisen  and  passed  away ; 
mighty  captains  have  appeared  on  the  stage  of  the  world, 
performed  their  part,  and  been  called  to  their  account ; 
wars  have  been  fought  and  ended  which  have  changed 
the  destinies  of  the  human  race.  New  arts  have  been 
invented  and  adopted,  and  have  pushed  the  old  out  of 
use  ;  the  household  economy  of  half  mankind  has  under 
gone  a  revolution.  Science  has  learned  a  new  dialect 
and  forgotten  the  old ;  the  chemist  of  1807  would  be  a 
vain  babbler  among  his  brethren  of  the  present  day, 
and  would  in  turn  become  bewildered  in  the  attempt  to 
understand  them.  Nation  utters  speech  to  nation  in 
words  that  pass  from  realm  to  realm  with  the  speed  of 
light.  Distant  countries  have  been  made  neighbors ; 
the  Atlantic  Ocean  has  become  a  narrow  frith,  and  the 
Old  World  and  the  New  shake  hands  across  it ;  the  East 
and  the  "West  look  in  at  each  other's  windows.  The  new 
inventions  bring  new  calamities,  and  men  perish  in 
crowds  by  the  recoil  of  their  own  devices.  War  has 
learned  more  frightful  modes  of  havoc,  and  armed  him 
self  with  deadlier  weapons ;  armies  are  borne  to  the  bat 
tle-field  on  the  wings  of  the  wind,  and  dashed  against 


GEORGE  P.  PUTNAM.  159 

each  other  and  destroyed  with  infinite  bloodshed.  We 
grow  giddy  with  this  perpetual  whirl  of  strange  events, 
these  rapid  and  ceaseless  mutations ;  the  earth  seems  to 
be  reeling  under  our  feet,  and  we  turn  to  those  who  write 
like  Irving,  for  some  assurance  that  we  are  still  in  the 
same  world  into  which  we  were  born ;  we  read,  and  are 
quieted  and  consoled.  In  his  pages  we  see  that  the  lan 
guage  of  the  heart  never  becomes  obsolete  ;  that  Truth, 
and  Good,  and  Beauty,  the  offspring  of  God,  are  not  sub 
ject  to  the  changes  which  beset  the  inventions  of  men. 
We  become  satisfied  that  he  whose  works  were  the  de 
light  of  our  fathers,  and  are  still  ours,  will  be  read  with 
the  same  pleasure  by  those  who  come  after  us." 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SANTA  CRUZ 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  DATE  stamped  below. 


50m-6,'67(H2523s8)2373 


